The reader will forgive me for o’erleaping myself, in my pleasure at this unlook’d-for twist of events, and my rejoicing in the visible harmony of Our Lord’s creation.
Let us return to the discreetly appoint’d main dining room of the Knickerbocker Club, upon that fateful night in January of 1899, where Mr. Malcolm Kennicott could not forestall a blush, as, withdrawing a much-folded letter, in blue stationery, from out his breast pocket (where, he confessed, he had been carrying it for nearly a half-year), he informed the incredulous Basil Miller that he had been the grateful recipient of a missive from the “lost” Malvinia Zinn—the which, under these extraordinary, indeed, unprecedented, circumstances, he thought it no violation of gentlemanly discretion, to share.
Mr. Kennicott did not, I hasten to say, hand over the letter to Basil Miller, but simply showed it to him, that he might form a glancing familiarity with the hand (which was indeed Malvinia’s, so far as Basil could recall). He then proceeded to summarize and paraphrase its contents, all the while flushing in a most abash’d, and charming, manner: “. . . Regret, and affection, and high regard for his poetic genius . . . and a plea for forgiveness, for the events of more than a quarter-century ago. . . . The wonder, and manly precision, and poetic splendor of rhyme and rhythm, displayed in the epical hymn . . . most astoundingly in the book devoted to Cortés. . . . He would not recall her, perhaps: a vain, foolish, infantile creature at that time: and she begged him now, to forgive her for the past, and forget her utterly, releasing her to that desir’d Oblivion, which, to her surprise, she found almost comfortable. Tho’ by penning this letter, she was risking exposure, she felt necessitated to write, to express her infinite relief and gratitude, that he lived (for she had feared otherwise) . . . and her joy, that The Vision of Columbus was receiving the critical and popular acclaim, which, her feeble aesthetic judgment told her, was no more than his due.” So greatly moved that, for a long moment, he could not continue, Mr. Kennicott shook out from his pocket a fresh linen handkerchief, with which to wipe at his eyes, beneath his somewhat misted glasses. Even Basil Miller felt constrained to swallow very hard, for he heard—ah, so clearly!—so captivatingly!—his dear lost cousin’s voice therein, and summoned back her especial sweetness, and grace, and maidenly charm, which, he could not help but think, he had had a villain’s hand in squandering, in bringing her to the salon of a “lady” of déclassé reputation: and in allowing her to be addressed by the notorious Orlando Vandenhoffen.
Mr. Kennicott took strength, and concluded the summary, in a broken voice, reiterating that the authoress of the letter felt compelled to insist, that her secret abode not be revealed; that no attempt be made, on his part, or on the part of any other, to seek her out in her exile; and that—most cruel!—the “impulsive and, it may be, unwelcome” letter not be answered.
Greatly excited, Basil Miller asked to examine the envelope: and saw clearly that the postmark was “Lawrenceville, N.J.”
“Why, that is very close by!” he exclaimed. “But a morning’s drive!”
But Mr. Kennicott took back the envelope, and folded the letter, to slip it inside, the while murmuring sadly that he could not, under any circumstances, disobey Miss Zinn’s command: for he respected her too much, and, even after so many tumultuous years, loved her too much, to do so.
Basil Miller then expressed some incredulity—for it had, after all, been many years, since his companion had last glimpsed Malvinia.
“Nay, not so,” Mr. Kennicott said warmly, “I had quite naturally recognized her as Malvinia Morloch, and must have attended upward of one thousand performances of hers, in this city, and elsewhere: forbidding myself, I hasten to say, from ever imposing upon her, or calling attention to myself in any way, save by sending her, from time to time, trifling gifts of flowers, and trinkets, and whatnot: along with her numerous other admirers!”
You can imagine how deeply moved Basil Miller was, when the soft-voiced poet went on to explain, that he had taken his present position, with Columbia College, in order that he might dwell in Manhattan, close by Malvinia. And he had been, of course, quite devastated, in fact ill with brain fever, for some weeks, after her much-publiciz’d disappearance, and the vicious rumors that she had drowned herself.
“But Lawrenceville, New Jersey, is wonderfully close by,” Basil Miller said, with agitation, “not many miles from Princeton, I believe. We shall hire a carriage, Mr. Kennicott, and drive out there, upon the morn!”
Again Mr. Kennicott demurred, nervously stroking his chin, and blinking warm tears from out his eyes. “Indeed, Mr. Miller, I cannot do that: I am very sorry, but I cannot. You, as her cousin, would doubtless be welcome at her door; but I—!”
Basil Miller made a gesture of amused impatience, and pouring more wine into their depleted glasses, said in a forthright voice, of a kind that had agreeably impressed Great-Aunt Edwina, and his elders in the profession of law, in Philadelphia: “Come now, Mr. Kennicott, tho’ you are a poet, you are also a man of the world: if you take so curious a stand, I shall think you more conversant with the merely epical amongst poetic compositions, and not the romance.”
AND THUS IT came about, that Basil Miller discovered the first of his four lost cousins: and the reluctant, and greatly distraught, suitor of old, Mr. Kennicott, was reunited with his love! Indeed, it was Mr. Kennicott who had escorted Malvinia to Bloodsmoor, upon the occasion at hand: but, discreetly wishing to remain unobtrusive, he had chosen to take rooms at the Bloodsmoor Inn, there to await his lady-friend, and to learn of what might transpire. (That Malvinia and Mr. Kennicott were not yet joined in holy matrimony, but only engaged, will not, I trust, arouse distaste in the sensitive reader—for Malvinia had quite reformed, and would not now, I am certain, have consented to remain overnight, even in a public inn, beneath the same roof as a gentleman not her spouse. Indeed, so extreme was her revulsion, for the bestial side of her own nature, that she had agreed to Malcolm Ken- nicott’s reiterated proposals of marriage, only on the condition that they dwell together as sister and brother: to which the adoring suitor gratefully agreed, having been celibate for his entire life, and rather more of the Platonic persuasion, than otherwise.)
THE GATHERING HAD had scant time to compose themselves, after Malvinia’s arrival, before the elderly butler announced “Mr. and Mrs. Nahum Hareton”—and there appeared Samantha!—and the treacherous apprentice Nahum: the criminal couple who had broken Mr. Zinn’s heart, and now seemed, by the resolute boldness with which they entered the room, hardly repentant.
But if Malvinia had aroused surprise, at the numerous changes time had wrought, in both her meretricious beauty, and her comportment, it was quite the reverse with Samantha: arousing surprise, perhaps, that, in the years since her departure, she had changed so very little. Now a married woman of mature years, and, in fact, a mother, she nonetheless strode forward with the brazen energy of a young and headstrong girl; and so healthful was the glow of her complexion, and so childishly appealing the freckles scattered across her face, that one might have sworn she was no one other than the Samantha of old!—her father’s belovèd disciple, and long the favorite of his heart.
The overjoy’d Octavia, in rushing to embrace this sister, was perhaps less unrestrained, than she had been with Malvinia: in part, because not so many years had passed, since the two had last glimps’d each other; and in part because they had not been exceedingly close. Nonetheless, Octavia’s tears freely sprang, and her words of exclamatory welcome, and admiration for Samantha’s appearance (for her face, now very slightly fuller than it had been, was lovely still; and her green, silk-lined traveling cloak was most becoming), were delightful to hear, the more so in that the elder Zinns were greeting this arrival with as much, or even more, restraint, as they had greeted Malvinia’s. And there was a forc’d warmth, as well, in the exchange between Samantha and Malvinia: who, staring and blinking at each other, and dazedly smiling, might have been strangers, and never sisters at all.
One c
ould clearly see the sharp vertical crease, that, of a sudden, appeared between Samantha’s eyebrows, as she approached her parents, and made a half-curtsy before them, and bespoke her sober words of greeting. Indeed, the atmosphere was quite strained, as Mrs. Zinn responded in a voice all but inaudible, and managed but the faintest twist of her stern lips; and Mr. Zinn, now grown ghastly pale, seemed incapable of lifting his steely gaze from off the carpet at his feet, to grant this daughter the courtesy of a glance, or the murmur of a reply.
Nor did the visibly nervous Nahum fare any better: tho’ some minutes were mercifully taken up, by Basil Miller’s friendly conversation, and by Malvinia’s show of flushed pleasure, in being introduced to her younger sister’s husband, when, of course, she had not known of any marriage; and had not dreamt that any suitor would prove so convincing, as to deflect Samantha’s interest from that of invention. Samantha, however, remained standing before her seated parents, and, at last, biting her lower lip, said in an even, tho’ rather hoarse, voice: “I am sorry, Mother, and dear Father, that our lives have so evolved, as to have necessitated this meeting: and I beg your Christian forgiveness, for having come into your presence this morning, and so clearly giving you cause for displeasure.” A speech that embarrassed all, not simply for the import of its words, but for the grave silence, and tacit agreement, with which it was received by the elder Zinns.
So quickly did Deirdre—black-garbed, and discreetly veiled—follow upon the heels of the Haretons, that I have not sufficient space, or time, to inform the reader of Samantha’s life, since her elopement a decade previously: save to remark that, without J.Q.Z.’s guiding genius, both Samantha and Nahum had settled in, with surprising equanimity of temperament, and some occasional laziness, to the life of an ordinary married couple, Samantha helping her husband out, as the spirit moved her, in his self-styled “inventor’s workshop” (which dealt primarily in repairs, particularly of electrical gadgets, and horseless carriages) in the small inland town of Guilford, Delaware. Apart from the Haretons’ concern with money—for their finances were always uncertain, and inflation steadily increased—and some occasional concern with their children’s health, which might be seen to be only natural, it was quite remarkable, that Samantha and Nahum led so peaceable, and unambitious, a life!—after the consuming passion of the workshop above the gorge, which had, one might have thought, infected Samantha for life. Indeed, had this renegade couple but consented to allow Our Saviour into their lives, and to arrange for the proper baptism of their children in the Episcopal Church, I would be inclined to think them altogether enviable: or, at any rate, so little fired by a desire for worldly advancement, or for the vertiginous pleasures of Fame, as to constitute Christian models, of mutual love and esteem, and connubial bliss.
Yet—here is Deirdre!
The unfeeling “sister” Deirdre: the adopted daughter Deirdre: “Deirdre of the Shadows” that was, and is no more!
So quietly did this lithe young woman enter the room, so stealthy was her motion, it was a very long moment before her staring family quite grasped the fact of her presence—and, it may be, realized in her slender form, and in her pallid countenance, the very origin of their misfortunes.
Not a mere girl of sixteen, but a mature woman of thirty-six: and doubtless aged beyond her years, by her unseemly experiences in the wide world, the nature of which Bloodsmoor might never know, or wish to know!—how very amazing to see her there, in the Golden Oak room of Kiddemaster Hall, an intruder in a world that, in opening its gates to admit her, had been grievously injur’d. And yet—there she stood: a veil of fine black lace discreetly screening her eyes.
How fitting, her breathless exclamation, which began with these words: “I am sorry—”
SEVENTY-THREE
The reader will be surpris’d to learn that Miss Deirdre Zinn was persuaded to respond to the classified notices that appeared with such regularity in the New York papers, and to acquit herself of her responsibilities to that generous family that, in stooping to adopt her, had unleashed such harm, by one of the most estimable personages in this chronicle: Dr. Lionel Stoughton.
Indeed—the revelation comes as a considerable surprise!
Yet more surprising still, the unlook’d-for development, which had its clouded origins in the early autumn of 1898, that the spinster Miss Zinn (now supporting herself on the meager salary of an amanuensis, for a retired Islamic scholar) was being courted by not one, but two, gentlemen, both possessing considerable fortunes!—and that she did not so much hesitate between them, but shrank from both, out of a fastidious dread that she might marry, simply from fear of poverty; and out of the more reasonable dread, that she was unworthy of either gentleman, and, indeed, of the sacred matrimonial state itself.
One of the suitors for her hand was Dr. Stoughton; the other, I am most reluctant to report, was the swarthy-skinned Hassan Agha, who, having returned to the States after some years of meditation in India, had made a display of renouncing his Theosophical ties, and, more generally, his interest in “all things Oriental and tiresome,” and had most desultorily taken up the Anglican faith of his deceased mother: the which he also rejected, after a shamefully brief period, tho’, shrewd as he was, and blessed with that craftiness we oft note in the pagan, he did not reject the handsome fortune that had come to him, by way of his mother.
The blond, upstanding, selfless Christian physician, on the one hand; and the olive-skinned, black-eyed, part-Indian ne’er-do-well, on the other: and yet, such was the unwholesome nature of Deirdre’s judgment, she dared hesitate between them, as if they were equals.
“I shall not press my suit, Miss Zinn,” spoke Dr. Stoughton, the modesty of his bearing scarce concealing a tumultuous heart that beat within, “for, I believe you well know, the breadth, and intensity, of my high regard for you: and I shrink from bringing more discomfiture to your troubl’d life.” Thus the courteous Dr. Stoughton, upon several occasions, and numerous times, employing divers language, in formal epistolary guise.
Now hear by contrast the rude imperatives of Mr. Hassan Agha, whose years of ascetic discipline, as a chela of Madame Blavatsky’s, and as a novice, more generally, in one of the most austere of the Hindoo sects, had scarce had any discernible effect, upon his latent animal nature: “Miss Zinn, I shall not let you rest, until you have given me an answer: nay, until you have given me the only answer that your nature, and mine, as well as the curious adventures that bind us, require. I declare myself with pride the son of an Indian prince, and an Englishwoman of excellent breeding, and commendable passion (if little common sense): with no slackening of that pride, I declare myself your slave, one who has known himself under your spell, since that prodigious morn at Landsdowne House, where, upon a beauteous grassy slope, I discovered your reclining, and insensible, form, and succumbed at once to your authority. Yes, even amidst that crowd of fools, quacks, dupes, and charlatans, in which I enacted some dictated role, which only the grotesquerie of karma-wisdom might explain, I had manliness enough, to realize my passion for you.”
Coarse words!—and accompanied by a hot dark gaze, and an intensity of manner, of such visible animalism, I cannot even attempt to convey, in the verbal art, its effect.
That Deirdre fully felt the barbarism of such utterances, is to be inferred, since, her silken cheeks flaming crimson, she sent Mr. Agha away with dispatch: that she wavered in her judgment, and succumbed to no little anxiety, during her insomniac nights, is clearly evident, in that she failed to forbid this importunate creature to indulge his passion for her, in sending voluminous missives to her, the which made disquieting reading, and struck a very exotic, and jarring, note, in the unadorned solitude of the single room which Deirdre now rented, in a modest, but altogether respectable, rooming house for “single ladies.” (This stolid brownstone on Stuyvesant Square, very near St. George’s Episcopal Church, accommodated some ten or twelve spinster ladies, all of good middle-class families, and most of an age advanced beyond Deirdre’s.
Without exception, all were employed in those feminine skills—that of teaching the very young, or tutoring the invalided, or acting as librarians, or pastoral assistants, or amanuenses—which, tho’ by tradition affording but meager financial reward, are nevertheless gratifying as occupations, and inestimable, in their quiet contribution to our industrious society. And not only was the subdued atmosphere of this excellent rooming house a palliative to Deirdre’s uncertain nerves, and vexing memories, but the tranquillity of East Seventeenth Street, and, indeed, the genteel atmosphere of the square itself, mercifully free of that bustling traffic that, elsewhere on the island, so plagued and endangered the lives of the city-dwellers, could not fail to act as a restorative, to her soul.)
“I shall not press my suit,” declared the one, in a manly voice made tremulous, by emotion; “I shall not let you rest,” declared the other, scarce minding that his animal exigency, and the smold’ring black gaze he bent upon her, were deeply distressing, to one of virginal status.