A Bloodsmoor Romance (49 page)

Mr. Hareton was too absorbed in Mr. Zinn's warm, rushing words, to stir sugar into his tea; he stared, with burning eyes, at the elder man's handsome countenance, and seemed at moments about to interrupt, out of curiosity and excitement. But he held his tongue, and acquitted himself well, and, despite his fascination with Mr. Zinn's dream-inventions (which Samantha feared might sound rather
too
quixotic, in this cluttered, somewhat shabby little workshop, smelling of tea leaves, wet clothes, and the acrid animal-mustiness of Pip's fur), he did not forget himself so far as to fail to rise, when Samantha joined them, and took her own seat quietly, by the stove.

Samantha, knowing her father so well, comprehended long before he happened upon the idea, that of course they would invite young Nahum Hareton to stay for dinner at the Octagonal House, at the very least; and possibly even to stay the night, in the room that had once belonged to Constance Philippa, and was now designated as the guest room—tho' few guests ever came, the Zinns' domestic budget being a modest one. She knew too, with a flurried heart, and not a few fond misgivings, that Mr. Zinn would most likely agree to allow the avid young man to be his assistant—his apprentice, indeed, for no salary; for of course there could be no salary.

(Afterward, upon being interrogated by his wife, as to the feasibility, let alone the safety, of taking on a stranger, in the intimacy of his workshop, Mr. Zinn would reply with the air of a man to whom certain truths are blatantly self-evident, and accessible to all: “But my dear Prudence, have you not seen young Nahum's
eyes?
—the fervor that burns within them, and the probable genius? And Samantha, too, trusts him: and Pip: and what better recommendations might an apprentice have?”)

 

AND SO NAHUM
Hareton came to the Zinn laboratory, as a pilgrim indeed, on foot, precisely as he said, with no genuine expectation that the great inventor would take him in, but much childlike hope, and a spirit of forthright zeal that was delightful to behold. That he would figure so centrally in John Quincy Zinn's life—and even more centrally in Samantha's—could not of course have been anticipated, on that mist-shrouded night so long ago, but three weeks after Samantha's twenty-first birthday.

 

IF I HAVE
neglected Samantha of late, in deference to the greater flurry and ado of those sisters who had fled Bloodsmoor, thereby bringing much shame and scorn upon their own heads, and, alas, the heads of their innocent relatives, it is hardly out of a sense of the child's comparative insignificance: for she and Octavia, at this point in our history, are still the most virtuous of young ladies, and models of daughterly deportment. Tho' Samantha's fervent devotion to her father, and her near-obsessive interest in work, did displease the female members of her family—not only Mrs. Zinn and Great-Aunt Edwina, but Octavia, too, and cousins Rowena and Flora and Odille, and every Philadelphia aunt who had an opinion on the subject—her loyalty surely pleased her father; and her assistance in the laboratory, never less than diligent, and frequently inspired, was invaluable to him.

She did his mathematics for him (for he had never quite mastered that discipline); she copied over his inky diagrams and charts, oft expanding them in scale, so as to make their dimensions clearer; she betook herself through the woods, to Judge Kidde­master's library, to check certain references, unavailable in the scanty encyclopedic volumes kept on hand, in the workshop. In the past several years she had taken from Mr. Zinn the burden of conversing with most visitors, including those manufacturers who journeyed to Bloodsmoor to offer research assignments to him (angered and discouraged, in many cases, by the prohibitive fees and royalty arrangements demanded by the megalomaniac Wizard of Menlo Park—a former associate of the notorious bandits Jay Gould and James Fisk, it is perhaps not generally known: and by temperament very much of their ilk); being a self-possessed young lady, and by no means the simple child her petite figure, plain freckled face, and small features made her out to be, she was able to speak with admirable composure to these gentlemen, and to induce them—in most cases—to raise their offers by at least a few hundred dollars: a feat Mr. Zinn would have been incapable of doing, both out of his innate modesty, and a disproportionate sense of his own market value.

By the age of twenty, this remarkable young lady had acquired her first patent, for a minor improvement upon Foucault's printing key frame (a device by which, it was thought, the blind might learn to write); and, were it not for Mr. Zinn's charity, or carelessness, in discussing this improvement with one Christopher Latham Sholes, of Mooresburg, Pennsylvania, it might have been the case that Samantha would have continued to experiment, until she hit upon the
typewriter
itself—an invention patented, in many stages, by Sholes, and eventually sold for a sadly low figure ($12,000) to Eliphalet Remington & Sons of Ilion, New York, with such extraordinary commercial results, in later years, the reader scarcely needs to be informed. Not long before Mr. Nahum Hareton knocked upon the workshop door, Samantha had been granted her second patent, for a method of waterproofing that was a considerable improvement over Mr. Zinn's earlier method, tho' still far from being ideal (that would come with rubberized fabrics); and from this she earned a small fee—hardly more than a pittance, in fact—every six months. In truth, Samantha thought little of these accomplishments, judging that her real work lay in the future, with the development of such inventions as the aluminum-frame dirigible; but her loving sister Octavia fussed over them, and insisted upon framing the patents in chestnut panels, painted in lavender and gold, to be hung over Samantha's workbench—to Samantha's embarrassment.

At other times, however, Octavia, like their numerous female relatives, professed to be concerned over Samantha's prospects for marriage. Her own engagement to Mr. Rumford having instilled in her a certain measure of confidence and generosity, she was forever nagging at Samantha to fashion her hair more attractively (for, indeed, the lacklustre chignon in which it was, each morning, so hastily fixed, hardly did justice to Samantha's beautiful red hair); and to have the servants unpick one or another of her housedresses, in order to launder it (for Samantha's clothes did have a tendency to lose their freshness, partly as a consequence of the fervor with which she customarily worked, and her negligence in applying deodorizing chloride of lime, or salicylic acid and talc, to her underarms); and to attempt a more consciously
pleasant
manner, befitting a young lady who has, after all, “come out” in society, and is not ignorant of social obligations and responsibilities.

“Do you
want
to be a spinster?” Octavia asked Samantha in exasperation, upon more than one occasion. “Do you
want
to frighten every eligible gentleman away, and have all of Bloodsmoor pity you?”

“A spinster is a lonely old maid who has wished to marry, and been neglected,” Samantha said, with an air of pert dignity that quite belied the hotness of heart she felt at her sister's persecution, “and since I have not the slightest wish to marry, and feel no terror of loneliness, I cannot therefore be a
spinster:
and must beg you to leave me in peace.”

(Samantha felt a sisterly happiness that Octavia was to be wed within a year; and that, Rumford Hall being not a great distance away, they would see each other frequently. But she could not deceive herself as to the masculine attractions of Lucius Rumford, who put her rather mischievously in mind of Gnasher, one of Grandfather Kidde­master's retired carriage horses, and she refused to share in the gaiety of spirits, exhibited by her cousins, and by Mrs. Zinn, which she judged somewhat
hysterical
—for did these women have so contemptible an opinion of the single state, and of their own innate worth?—had they feared so
very
much that Octavia might be “left behind”?)

Samantha adjudged Octavia to be superior to her prospective bridegroom in every conceivable way, and took note, to her own satisfaction, that, since the announcement of the wedding banns by the Reverend Hewett, from the pulpit of the village church, Octavia looked prettier than ever before in her twenty-four years. Her warm brown eyes shone with good health, her brow was smooth, and her round cheeks were lightly touched with a pale rosy blush. If Octavia did not possess Malvinia's extravagant loveliness, or Constance Philippa's haughty good looks, or even Deirdre's mysterious, enigmatic beauty, it was nevertheless the case that her warmth, and the excellence of her heart, made her a far more desirable companion for any man—so Samantha thought, in passionate defense of her sister, tho' Octavia
would
nag about Samantha's own prospects.

When next Octavia raised the maddening question, “Do you
want,
Samantha, to be a spinster?” Samantha answered at once: “I had rather be a spinster, and answer only to myself, than be an apprentice to another person—one whom, no doubt, I would hardly know.”

 

LEST THE READER
suspect that John Quincy Zinn, under the duress, perhaps, of o'erexacting work, was led to
imagine
that Thomas Alva Edison sought to spy on him, in order to steal his secrets, it should be pointed out that certain sketches for an incandescent lamp, first made by J.Q.Z. in the early Seventies, were appropriated by Edison, and released to the world—under Edison's imprint, of course—in 1879. So with numerous minor improvements on Morse's telegraph; and, later in the century, the “discovery” of the wax cylinder phonograph, in which sound was first
recorded
and
preserved
and
replayed,
by the same Edison, the self-proclaimed Wizard of Menlo Park, who gave no more tribute to the honest inventors from whom he thieved, than he gave financial remuneration!

If John Quincy harbored bitter thoughts, and resented the public acclaim so lavishly bestowed upon his rival, he said not a word; no more than he spoke, even to his dear wife, of his disappointment at each spring's failure to find him elected to the American Philosophical Society. (That his father-in-law, Judge Kidde­master, should feel anger at this slight, and speak of it to all who would listen, is not surprising, given the Judge's rash temper; but the elderly man's rancor caused J.Q.Z. some chagrin.) “I am, it seems, one of those whose duty it is to
stand
and
wait,
” John Quincy said, in jest; but Mrs. Zinn was not amused. “This nation shall one day kneel in tribute to you,” she said, her stern lower lip quivering, “nay, I would wish the nation might
cower
before you.”

“My dear Prudence,” John Quincy said, startl'd, “how can you wish the
United States of America
to cower before anyone!”

He threw himself more obsessively than ever into his work, assisted now by both Samantha, and young Nahum Hareton: and his dreams were all of the gigantic dirigible; and the (revised) perpetual-motion machine; and an electric grinding machine to dispose of chicken, turkey, goose, and duck feathers (the marrow of such feathers being treacherously difficult to grind down, as all farmers know); and a thermal suit, for Northern winters, which the wearer would adjust to his comfort; and a new, still vague, sketch for a device called only
The Eye,
to be composed of many electrified mirrors, for instantaneous communication to a central focus or authority, with the hope that crime might one day be eliminated, from the civilized nations.

I very much doubt that so good-tempered, and so industrious, a gentleman, might be subject to fits of jealousy, or bitterness; but, if this was ever the case, Mr. Zinn gave no sign, to the outward world: no more than he gave any sign of the disappointment he so keenly felt, in regard to his three lost daughters. (Whose names, alas, he did not wish to hear uttered, in his household!)

“Do you ever allow yourself, to think of them,” Mrs. Zinn sometimes asked, as, yet unsleeping, wife and husband lay abed, “to think, and to envision their probable fates?”

Whereupon Mr. Zinn but heavily sighed, and made no other response, lying stock-still on his side of the expansive bed—feigning sleep, it may be, until, indeed, sleep o'ertook them both.

 

ONE DAY I
shall awake, to discover that I have sleepwalked my way through life, Samantha bethought herself, of a sudden, but how is it to be prevented? What, apart from our companionable labor in the workshop, and the delight of Father's presence, and Pip's mischief, is there in this world, to impede my headlong flight?

Thus the small, pale, plain girl with the colorless lashes, and the thin lips, and the quizzical green eyes queried herself, not knowing what her premonition signified; or why peculiar emotions, at unpredictable times of the day, seized hold of her petite frame, and made her tremble with cold. One day I shall awake, she thought, staring at the workbench before her, and at the clutter she so dearly loved, but to
what?
—and
how?

Nor do I entirely comprehend the motive for such idle thoughts. Yet I would not be altogether honest, if I did not soberly present them in my chronicle, that the reader might judge for himself. For
why
should so cherished and entrusted a daughter, knowing herself infinitely privileged to work in the laboratory of a man of genius, knowing herself, as it were,
set apart from the common run of young women,
think any distracting thoughts at all?

All busily and happily the months passed, and the seasons: and, not long after her twenty-second birthday, Miss Samantha Zinn was granted her third patent, which Octavia, unfortunately, neglected to frame, as a consequence of her own activity, as a new bride, and mistress of austere Rumford Hall. Mr. Zinn, Samantha, and the humble young apprentice Nahum Hareton, working together, yet oft silently, in the rustic cabin above the gorge, passed many a tiring but rewarding day, in their pursuit of divers dreams, primarily that of the aluminum-frame dirigible—the which presented some small, but very nagging, problems, deriving from its extreme weight. For the most part, Samantha acquitted herself admirably, in her father's service; and, living all absorbed in the present challenge, rarely succumbed to the idleness, of which I have just spoken; and rarely to thoughts of remorse, or regret, or wonderment, concerning her renegade sisters.