As for the sisters, of them all only Malvinia harbored some small hope that Edwina might have remembered her; but Malvinia was, at the same time, too skeptical, both of her great-aunt’s generosity, and her own deserts, to seriously expect any inheritance. Octavia had sighed, and dabbed at her tear-streaked face, and flatly declared to Mr. McInnes (with whom she spoke almost daily, on matters of financial and legal significance), that she expected not a penny: for the vindictive old lady had never forgiven her, that Little Godfrey had crawled beneath Edwina’s skirts so long ago, as a mere prank. Samantha had so little expectation, she and her husband had worried betwixt themselves, as to whether they might dare ask Mr. Miller for some recompense, for their journey by rail from Guilford to Bloodsmoor: a mere $28 for both tickets, round-trip, but a dismayingly high price in their eyes. (They decided they must not ask. “I would not want anyone in my family,” Samantha declared, “to know how poor we are: and to pity us.”) As for Deirdre—she was too o’ercome with mortification, at the coldness with which the elder Zinns had greeted her, to give any clear thought to the purpose of the meeting: nor might her tear-beclouded eye have discerned the weighty parchments on the escritoire, at Basil Miller’s elbow, which contained the Last Will and Testament of Miss Edwina Kiddemaster. I must leave this accursèd place, she silently wept, for it is not my home, and never was; and Dr. Stoughton did me a singular disservice, to direct me here.
Still the gold-and-ebony French Empire clock on the mantel continued its solemn ticking; and the minute hand advanced, now moving upward to noon; and the missing sister failed to appear.
Exhibiting some disappointment, in which vexation was mixed, Basil Miller at last cleared his throat to speak, and was rather petulantly declaring that the meeting might require postponement, for, according to Miss Kiddemaster’s express wishes, all the sisters must be present, when, of a sudden, the door was opened, and a gentleman strode in, unannounced—a stranger with dark hair, graying at the temples; and fierce heavy brows; and a brisk, impertinent manner, enhanced by the tight-fitting frock coat he wore, and the broad-brimmed white Western hat he carried rakishly in his hand, and the strident hammering of his high-heeled leather boots!
Doubtless this strange gentleman felt some natural anxiety, to intrude upon a private gathering; yet he took care, to exhibit little apprehension; and maintained a practic’d poker face, as, curtly bowing to the amazed assemblage, he spoke: “I believe you are expecting Miss Constance Philippa Zinn, who, unfortunately, cannot be here today. She has designated me her sole agent in this matter, and has given me power of attorney: I am Philippe Fox, of the Rock Bluff Mining and Milling Company, of San Pedro, Arizona; I am, as well, a former Assistant Deputy to the United States Marshal, for Southeast Arizona. Please accept my heartfelt apologies for my tardiness—but I have come a very long way.”
As you may well imagine, everyone stared at this impudent stranger; and even Basil Miller, ordinarily so composed, was taken aback.
For here was the very extravagance, the very audacity, of the West!—quite o’erwhelming, in this decorous Eastern drawing room.
All stared; several of the ladies gasped; and the interloper boldly stood his ground, his dark gaze moving agilely from face to face. He was brazen, and yet, was there not a certain quavering to his voice?—a nasal, or, it may have been, an effeminate note?
“I see you are struck mute,” this personage said, his lips twisting in a delicate, and ironic, smile, “and so I have no choice but to repeat myself: your kinswoman Miss Constance Philippa Zinn has bade me come here, in her place, as her designated agent: Philippe Fox, of Arizona, and, more lately, of San Francisco.”
Thus speaking, he bowed; and with a flamboyant gesture brandished his white hat before him.
Then, of a sudden, Octavia heaved herself from her seat, so distraught, her fan clattered to the floor, and her ample bosom rose, in passionate inhalation. She gasped aloud, and cried: “Dear God! I cannot believe it! What do I see! This person is—this gentleman—this stranger—this—” Sean McInnes quickly rose to his feet, to give her aid, for fear that she might sink into a swoon; but she forced herself free of his restraining arm, and half turned, reeling, to exclaim to the assemblage: “It is Constance Philippa! It is our sister, Constance Philippa! It—he—this—in disguise—in masculine attire—ah, do you not see!—or am I mad! She stands before us, in obscene array: our belovèd Constance Philippa!”
Now all stared at the intruder, and saw: the face roughly tanned by exposure to the elements, and the figure consciously lean and erect, as a man’s: yet, the very eyes, the very nose, the very set of the lips, of Constance Philippa, of old!
(And yet, as a number of the observers privately queried themselves, Was this not a man, indeed? A twin of Constance Philippa’s who was—who was unmistakably—a member of the masculine gender?)
THUS, I HOPE to convey to you, some small measure of the disruption that ensued, upon the brazen entrance of “Philippe Fox”—yet it is exceedingly difficult, for the minutes jarringly passed, and the words that sprang to Mr. Fox’s lips so readily, and so rudely, were of a blatant Western distortion, devilishly problematic, for one of my background to correctly transcribe.
Mr. Basil Miller, cloaking himself in the mantle of civil and legal responsibility, sought to interrogate Mr. Fox, who, flushing an angry brick-red, was suspiciously reluctant to be interrogated; or even to display documents pertaining to his identity, and to his relationship with Constance Philippa, tho’, as he loudly reiterated, he had such documents on his person. It may well have crossed Mr. Miller’s mind (that gentleman not lacking in instinctive acumen) to ask this personage if, in fact, he was Constance Philippa, in disguise as a man: yet such was his gentility, and so highly developed his sense of what might, and what might not, be spoken aloud, in a company mixed of gentlemen and ladies, that he naturally held his tongue; and the question went unasked.
The minutes passed, and now the first strokes of noon were sounded, and yet the contention persisted, primarily between Mr. Miller and Mr. Fox, tho’ Mr. McInnes, being a fellow attorney, offered, after some hesitation, to give his opinion; and the doctor of medicine in the gathering, Dr. Moffet, emphatically delivered his judgment—that, as no lady would wish, or dare, or know how to, wear the garments of the opposite sex, this personage could not, under any circumstances, be Constance Philippa, whom he had known very well, he asserted, in her girlhood. “And a quiet, reposed, devout young miss she was,” the elderly physician asserted. So distraught did Dr. Moffet become, as he spoke, that he ended by shaking his palsied fist at Mr. Fox, and crying: “What have you done with our young lady, you cad?”
Confusion and dismay! And grave concern, as to Constance Philippa’s fate: for it spread through many minds, as the discussion raged on, that if, indeed, Philippe Fox were the renegade Constance Philippa, in male attire, might this not, in its obscene defiance of all the laws of nature, be a more heinous fate than nearly any other, which might be imagin’d by her kinsfolk? Octavia, having flushed an unhealthy crimson, was seated almost haphazardly in her chair, and vigorously fanning herself; so distressed, she bade the solicitous Mr. McInnes to let her be, and would not hear of it, that a servant be enjoined, to bring her a glass of ether and water, or Miss Emmeline’s Remedy, to revive her spirits. Under her breath this distraught sister murmured: “It is she—it is she—but so horribly attired—so hideously changed—in masculine raiment—dear Constance Philippa—our lost sister—ah, it is she, after twenty years: and yet not she, but a devil in her place!”
Thus that sister, who, I hope I do not speak too explicitly in affirming, surely possessed, in her heart, the most bounteous sisterly affection; yet Malvinia, too, expressed great dismay, staring, and so struck by the horror of “Philippe Fox,” that she could not open her fan, but held it before her, in her gloved hand, in an attitude of mesmeriz’d bewilderment. Constance Philippa?—and yet not Constance Philippa? Might this gentleman be a long-lost cousin, or even
a twin? How familiar he looked! And his stance, and his manner, and his flashing dark eyes, and the impudence of his noble brow! Ah, how tantalizingly familiar! And yet—who was he?
Deirdre lifted her veil, to observe more closely, and satisfied herself, that the intruder was no one other than her eldest sister, in convincing disguise: for, being naturally narrow-hipped, and lean, and deep of voice, she could have no great difficulty in playing the part of a man, so long as no one examined too closely. Deirdre did not recall Constance Philippa with much clarity, or, indeed, much affection, but she believed she would recognize that inimitable expression of hers anywhere—a curious, and not uncharming, admixture of the satiric, and the outraged, and the amused, and the childishly hopeful. She had, in all, become a very attractive man: tho’ rather too abrasive, and rough in his gestures, for Kiddemaster Hall.
The impetuous Samantha then arose, and advanced upon Mr. Fox, to extend her hand, and to say: “You do not know me, for I very much doubt that my eldest sister troubled, to speak of me: but I am Samantha, her youngest sister, now Mrs. Nahum Hareton, and very pleased to make your acquaintance.”
It was the effect of this bold gesture, to disconcert Mr. Fox, rather than to console him (or her) in the folly being perpetrated; tho’ that had been furthest from Samantha’s intention. (She had divined a certain fixedness of notion, and a very real, if latent, ferocity, on the part of Philippe Fox, and had reasoned, it would seem admirably, that the wisest strategy might simply be, to acquiesce to the duplicity; there being the worry, too, that Mr. Fox carried, hidden inside his handsome cream-colored jacket, a handgun.) After a moment’s hesitation, Mr. Fox did shake her hand, the while muttering, gruffly, that of course he knew her—he knew them all—Constance Philippa had told him all—and it was no use, their hoping that he was a mere stranger, to be lied to, and humored, and defrauded, of any inheritance that might be Constance Philippa’s.
Whereupon the patriarchal John Quincy Zinn, rising unsteadily to his full height, and peering at the vulgarian interloper over his half-moon spectacles, declared, in a voice quivering with noble revulsion, and incredulity: “Would that the Twentieth Century never arrives, if it brings us such obscenities!”—and, leaning heavily on a servant’s arm, insisted upon being led away, that he might purify his soul, in a place of solitude. “It is not possible,” he murmured, shaking his grizzl’d head, “that I have seen, what I have seen.”
This kingly exit had the effect of subduing the others, and even the brash Philippe Fox appeared somewhat crestfallen, turning on his heel to stare, with sombre blinking eyes, at the retreating back of the old gentleman. His lips moved, as if he might speak: but naturally he dared not speak, to further contaminate the sensibility, of that man who was, or had been, Constance Philippa’s respected sire.
Now in the hushed silence that ensued, Basil Miller being, for the moment, stymied, as to how best to proceed, the assemblage was startl’d, to see Mrs. Zinn rise from her chair: the general thought being that, as Mr. Zinn’s devoted wife, she would wish to follow him, and provide such succor and solace, as only the wifely consort can provide, in such predicaments. But Mrs. Zinn, stout-bodied in her purple drapery, her enormous leg-o’-mutton sleeves giving her a regal—nay, a kingly—aspect, made her way with no assistance to Mr. Fox, who, with great unease, and visible nervousness, bowed low before her: and this imperial lady, summoning forth all the steely graciousness of her Kiddemaster blood, spoke unsmilingly, yet not sternly: “I know not, Mr. Fox, if you are more aptly to be called my long-lost daughter, or, indeed, that benighted emissary of hers, which you make claim to be: and, as I am not accustomed to amusing myself, in charades, deceptions, and histrionic displays, I cannot further perplex myself, as to the true nature of the situation, if, indeed, any true nature there be.” At this, Mrs. Zinn paused to draw breath, and the clock’s ticking solemnly sounded, and Mr. Fox, his tann’d countenance darkening still further, bowed again, in mute and respectful submission. Mrs. Zinn then continued, extending a lace-glov’d hand, for him to kiss: “As, it is assumed, my dear departed Aunt Edwina watches o’er this assemblage, from her heavenly abode, we must acquiesce to her wishes: which, I cannot doubt, would involve a resumption of the proceedings, and a reading of the Last Will and Testament. I propose that Mr. Miller admit you to this private chamber, and, indeed, welcome you, as if both, or any, or all, possibilities were enmesh’d: my long-lost daughter Constance Philippa; or her designated agent Mr. Fox; or any combination thereof, which, tho’ offensive to the civilized mentality, may yet prove acceptable, and pragmatic, so far as the law is concerned.”
THIS EXCELLENT COMPROMISE being heartily accepted by all, and even pleasing to Philippe Fox, to some extent, the proceedings were resumed: with such unlook’d-for results, I am scarce able to continue.
SEVENTY-FIVE
In adjudging the revelations that were subsequently made, upon this extraordinary day in the lives of the Zinns—indeed, in the accumulative history of the great House of Kiddemaster itself—I am, after many years of consideration, tempted to state that, for the assemblage, and for myself as well, the disclosure that Miss Edwina Kiddemaster had had a private life, was very nearly of equal weight, in terms of the incredulous consternation unleash’d, as to the precise nature of that life.
That she had known tempestuous passion; that she had known the heart’s frenzied tripping, and the outlaw euphoria of the racing pulse; that she had known—alas, and paid dearly for her knowledge!—even the gratified contentment (however temporary, however false) of believing herself loved, by a man: all this, so quickly and roughly disclos’d, and coupled with a most astounding disclosure, precipitated such chaos in the hearts of her kinsmen, and in their embarrassed companions, that it is exceedingly difficult, to this day, to comprehend the gravity of all that transpired!
On the one hand, we are presented with Miss Edwina Kiddemaster, the esteem’d authoress, from whose pen there flowed, with a most tireless and skilled facility, upward of fifty volumes addressing themselves to certain of the most knotty problems of etiquette and behavior, of our time: a lady correct in every detail, gracious, benign, condescending, and fully at ease in the most distinguished company, of both this continent, and England. On the other, we are confronted with a headstrong creature, who, tho’ by no means young at the time of her folly, nonetheless plunged into the most sordid of liaisons, the most sordid, that is, short of actual immorality. (For Edwina and her seducer were married; and their sole child was born, if we are to trust the official documents, some days past nine months, of the wedding morn.)
Alas, how piteous the irony, that, in the very same week of October, 1861, that one of Miss Edwina Kiddemaster’s most influential prose pieces, “Thy Will Be Done: Woman’s Ministration, as Mother, Sister, and Daughter,” appeared in The Ladies’ Wreath, she met, quite by accident, or the cruelest fate, the blackguard gentleman who was to prove the author of her undoing—how piteous, and how tragical! That Captain Burlingame was the scion of an historic English house, and, indeed, the eventual cause of Edwina’s inheriting even more riches than, in her frenzied fancy, poor Prudence suspected, does, perhaps, somewhat mitigate the situation, as to its barbarism: yet it is difficult to comprehend, let alone forgive, such behavior, in a Kiddemaster of her generation. . . .
But I am sorry: I speak in such haste, and with such artless passion, that, in violation of all the rules of narrative discourse, I have o’erleapt my story once again; and must restrain myself. That I have, as the historian of this family, suffered not a few shocks to my constitution, in the course of transcribing all the truth, and censoring naught a whit, is a fact that must be borne in silence: nor should the reader be deprived of those reputed pleasures, of discovering, for himself, in faithful chronological sequence, precisely what has happened.
THUS IT IS most instructive, to return to the Golden Oak room of Kiddemaster Hall, where Mr. Basil Miller, his healthsome cheeks grown ruddy from the recent contretemps, and
, doubtless, in anticipation of the gravity of the scene now to unfold, under his professional direction, casts his solemn gaze out amongst the assemblage, and declares the hour arrived: for all the requirements of Miss Kiddemaster’s Last Will and Testament have been met, in spirit if not precisely in letter. And now the great waxen seal must be broke, and the contents of the massive document revealed, in compliance with the law of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and with the custom of the land.
The reader will sympathize, I hope, with those divers persons—including, I am bound to say, Miss Deirdre Zinn and Mrs. Samantha Hareton—who, tho’ far beyond hoping, or expecting, that any monetary or other reward might come to them, nonetheless found themselves, ah! so very like children! halfway surrendered to the wish: Pray do not let me be forgotten. Possessed of enough worldly sagacity, to know themselves thoroughly undeserving, and, in fact, to know the fantastical absurdity of their wish, these young ladies yet trembled inwardly, in anticipation of Basil Miller’s pronouncements, with near as much dread and euphoric apprehension as Mrs. Zinn, whom both tradition and common sense—nay, and justice above all—would choose as the heiress, of the greater share of the fortune. It would be indeed a cruel sport, indulged in, doubtless, by many novelists, in their fictive fancies, to visit the secret hearts of each of the principals, in turn, to divulge their prayers, their fears, their wild baseless yearnings, whilst they retain masks of sombre decorum: or offer, even at this advanced date, countenances still sickl’d over, with mourning for the deceased woman. How the pale, drawn, subdued Malvinia, now but the wraith of her old beauteous self, clenched her gloved hands in secret, in her lap, the while staring at her cousin Basil (for whom, it should be said, she felt no rancor, or elemental dislike, for the part he had so whimsically played in her fall) as he opened the document, with elaborate ceremony; how poor Octavia, tho’ giving every semblance of calm, and no longer breathing so laboriously, stared at her cousin with glassy eyes, praying O Dear Aunt, please do not forget me: do not scorn me, and my child, another time!—for I fear my heart shall break. And it would be remiss, to peer into Mr. Fox’s heart, where, in all defiance of his impudent external form, and the bemused stoicism of his countenance, a child’s blunt wish defined itself thusly: Please!—and I will be good, forevermore.