For Malvinia now was married, and living with her much-devoted Mr. Kennicott, a sufficient distance away, in Rhode Island: to which the happy couple had retired, that they might escape the flurried publicity surrounding Mr. Kennicott’s fame, as “The Young Longfellow,” and that Malvinia might, all modestly, resume her thespian activities—now on a much reduced and agreeably amateur scale, with no pressure put upon her to excel, or to reap commercial gain; and Octavia was so immersed in her duties as mother, and mistress of Rumford Hall (which hallowed interior she was having completely renovated and refurbished, by the most skilled carpenters, artisans, and decorators, in the East), and wife-to-be, that, of late, she had but scant time for her ailing father, and, I am distressed to say, but a perfunctory interest, in her old household and its vicissitudes.
And, to no one’s regret, Constance Philippa had, now, quite disappeared.
As for Samantha, it seems that, of late, she had resumed her activities in the workshop, alongside her belovèd Nahum, and was now dabbling with so divers an assortment of gadgets, mechanisms, and contraptions, I am reluctant to dignify them with the title inventions. After an interregnum of some years, this impulsive young woman was in the midst of constructing models for a baby-mobile (an apparatus not very different from a baby-stroller, albeit that the baby’s, or toddler’s, feet were free to touch the ground, and a railing encircled the seat, so that the enterprising tot could, if he wished, propel himself by the action of his legs: “In this way,” Samantha argued, “both self-locomotion and self-reliance will be practiced, in a single gesture”); and a self-filling pen (wherein ink came somehow from within the stem, and, by a gravitational urging I cannot pretend to understand, flowed ingeniously to the point, with no need of replenishment, for periods of as long as six weeks!); and a bicycle-umbrella (this somewhat awkward object being portable, and made of near-translucent rainproofed cloth, to be fitted in place over the rider, to protect him or her from the vicissitudes of the weather). In addition, Samantha was experimenting with a substitute for glue, to consist of fine-ground pebbles, pitch, flour, and water; and a timed kitchen, wherein an ingenious network of wires, strings, wheels, and pulleys, attached to a clock, would allow the housewife to govern her kitchen by remote control, as it were—for what earthly purpose, I cannot fathom! Her notion of pulp-paper napkins, bandages, and diapers, to be used but a single time and then freely tossed away, was prized by her husband as an excellent idea indeed: yet he feared, rightfully enough, that no decent womenfolk should wish to be so visibly spendthrift, as to discard that which might be laundered, and ironed, and used again—and again.
Thus, Samantha was once again absorbed in her own life, some distance away in Delaware: and responded but vaguely, to overtures made to her by Deirdre, that she visit Bloodsmoor more frequently.
Alone!—alone of all the Zinn girls!—and, alas, on this night of pitiless howling winds! Yet—am I not grateful at last to be so? the shivering young woman bethought herself, as, to little avail, she continued her search; made increasingly difficult as the minutes passed, and her gloved fingers grew stiff from the cold. For whilst I might delight in the companionship of so cheery a sister as Octavia, or so enterprising a sister as Samantha, I should not, in any case, wish my malevolent spirits back; and I am not prepared—indeed, I am most decidedly not prepared—to leap, with unseemly haste, into the condition of wifehood.
(That Deirdre was beleaguered, even at this crucial moment, by recollections of Dr. Stoughton’s earnest countenance, and Hassan Agha’s smold’ring black eyes, should not, I think, discredit her, in the reader’s stern judgment: for she was, despite the relative maturity of her age, and the elevation of her rank, but a woman in her sensibility, to be forgiven romantic excesses, inappropriate otherwise. And tho’, at this time, she sensed a certain ineluctable swaying of her heart, in the direction of one gentleman, she surely did not, and could not, know, with any certitude—this being a grave decision to be made some months later, well into the spring of 1900; and in that temporal realm into which I have forsworn peering, for purposes of historical and structural symmetry, and in the interests of discretion.)
Thus, it is difficult to determine, whether the accident with the kerosene lamp was a consequence of Deirdre’s distracted thoughts, or her stiffened fingers, or, as she herself adamantly believed, a sudden intrusion from Spirit World (the which, alas, she had believed o’ercome, forever!): or whether, in some solemn wise, as I shall not dare to inquire into, it was an Act of God, merely employing Deirdre as an instrument. (For I cannot think that Our Heavenly Father was greatly pleas’d, as to the recent surprising statement of J.Q.Z., relative to His, and J.Q.Z.’s, contrasting prowesses, in the making of explosives.)
In any case, the confus’d episode transpired in this way: Deirdre believed she had, at last, located the crucial sheet of foolscap; in her zeal to ascertain whether this was so, she brought it very close to the singed globe of the lamp; whereupon, by her own testimony, a spirit hand of near-miniature proportions, possessing prehensile fingers, and o’erlong nails not unlike claws, grasped hold of her wrist, and forced the paper down inside the glass, and into the flame!—with the immediate consequence, that it burst into greedy licking flames, and so terrified the young woman, that she dropped the lamp, and caused a larger conflagration to ensue, amidst the swirls and eddies of J.Q.Z.’s valuable debris!
Yet, such was Deirdre’s courage, and moral fibre, that, after her initial panic, she summoned the rational strength—I know not from whence!—to stamp out the spreading flames, with her pretty kidskin boots: and so to save the greater part of the workshop, encompassing most of the machines, from destruction.
This she did, panting the while, and sobbing aloud, with fright, and, doubtless, with consternation, for the outrage that had transpired: and, it may have been, she felt some healthsome anger as well, that any spirit—even that, she guessed, of a furry, mischievous little imp!—should dare to touch her, in her new position as mistress of Kiddemaster Hall.
So the fire was extinguished; and the laboratory saved, for posterity; but, unfortunately, the critical sheet of foolscap was destroyed—a heartrending loss which, I hope I am not intrusive in saying, did not affect J.Q.Z.’s fate, or hasten the speed of his demise, since, it is estimated, the unhappy man expired, at the very moment of the conflagration.
But Deirdre did not know that, of course, as, shaken, and rueful, and strangely exhilarated (whether as a result of the drunkard pumping of her blood, or the bracing midnight air), she contemplated the smoking disorder about her, and racked her imagination, as to how she might hope to explain the loss to her invalid father. That it was irreparable, and tragic, she could not doubt; that it would not do for her to say, that another inventor might one day duplicate the formula, she certainly knew.
“And, should it not be duplicated,” the excited young woman declared, “—will I not then have saved the world? Spared us, from the madman’s dream?”—tho’ in the next breath she chided herself, and bit her lip, for having uttered so blasphemous a statement.
EIGHTY-FOUR
The history of the remarkable Zinn family thus closes, upon the very stroke of midnight, of an eve long past: the death of Bloodsmoor’s most eminent personage sadly upon us, and the unseemly exhilaration, in the very heart of blasphemy, of our heroine Deirdre.
Beyond this I cannot—indeed, I do not wish—to venture, for the Twentieth Century is not my concern. That thankless task I leave to the young, and to those yet unborn!—for whom, it grieves me to say, these immortal lines of Mr. Longfellow may constitute more a riddle, than a gladsome certitude—
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the sou
l.
NOVELS BY JOYCE CAROL OATES
With Shuddering Fall (1964)
A Garden of Earthly Delights (1967)
Expensive People (1968)
them (1969)
Wonderland (1971)
Do with Me What You Will (1973)
The Assassins (1975)
Childwold (1976)
Son of the Morning (1978)
Unholy Loves (1979)
Bellefleur (1980)
Angel of Light (1981)
A Bloodsmoor Romance (1982)
Mysteries of Winterthurn (1984)
Solstice (1985)
Marya: A Life (1986)
You Must Remember This (1987)
American Appetites (1989)
Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart (1990)
Black Water (1992)
Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang (1993)
What I Lived For (1994)
Zombie (1995)
We Were the Mulvaneys (1996)
Man Crazy (1997)
My Heart Laid Bare (1998)
Broke Heart Blues (1999)
Blonde (2000)
Middle Age: A Romance (2001)
I’ll Take You There (2002)
The Tattooed Girl (2003)
The Falls (2004)
Missing Mom (2005)
Black Girl / White Girl (2006)
The Gravedigger’s Daughter (2007)
My Sister, My Love (2008)
Little Bird of Heaven (2009)
Mudwoman (2012)
The Accursed (2013)
Copyright
A BLOODSMOOR ROMANCE. Copyright © 1982 by Joyce Carol Oates, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
A hardcover edition of this book was originally published in 1982 by E. P. Dutton, Inc.
FIRST ECCO PAPERBACK EDITION 2013
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN 978-0-06-226919-5
Epub Edition © JULY 2013 ISBN 9780062233318
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Joyce Carol Oates, A Bloodsmoor Romance
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