A Bloodsmoor Romance (66 page)

For a very long time Mrs. Zinn contemplated the young gentleman in the photograph, and then, making no haste, with an expulsion of wearied breath that might have been a maternal sigh, she hoisted her considerable bulk forward in her chair, and thrust the offensive newspaper into the fireplace, where it burst into gladsome flames at once, and was extinguished in a moment. Octavia, staring sightless at her knitting, felt her pulses race, and murmured boldly: “That gentleman—whosoever he may be—caught my eye—I know 'twas foolish—the features very distantly resembling those of—of— Ah, I
know
'twas foolish, and I hope you will not scold, Mother!”

Mrs. Zinn picked up her knitting, and one could not have judged, from the mechanical rapidity with which her well-practiced fingers worked, and her rigorous posture, whether she was displeased with her daughter, or no. After some minutes she said: “It is hardly a time in your life, dear daughter, in which to allow your imagination free rein. If you are troubled by wild, scattered, unproductive thoughts, I shall insist that you spend more time at prayer, both in the morning, and before retiring at night. And I shall leave for you, this very day, a small bottle of Miss Emmeline's—which, as you know, Dr. Moffet most strenuously prescribes for my sensitive nerves, and which, I am pleased to say, does have some minimal effect. At this time in your life, dear Octavia,” Mrs. Zinn said, deliberately spacing out her words, so that, with great subtlety, she was able to make explicit what must needs have remained unspoken between them, so causing sweet Octavia to blush with embarrassment and pleasure, “at this sacred time in your life, in which, alas, the blood oft runs riot with fanciful notions delved from God knows where, and one conjures up fatuous ideas, as exotic and unspeakable as a sudden ravening appetite for fruit out of season, it is wise, my dear daughter, to surrender yourself fully to Our Heavenly Father, that nothing go amiss: Our Heavenly Father, and Miss Emmeline's—which, if you do not allow me to forget, I shall leave for you today.”

Chastised, yet gratified, Octavia glanced up shyly from her knitting: but Mrs. Zinn did not meet her eye, and was now as placidly knitting, as if no problematic exchange had occurred. The sudden outburst of flames in the fireplace having died back, and the birch logs burning as steadily as before, perhaps nothing
had
occurred.

“Miss Emmeline's Remedy—ah yes!—I am very grateful to you, Mother—very grateful indeed: but I am already under Dr. Moffet's prescription for that very medicine, and do find it salubrious,” Octavia murmured.

There being nothing further to say on the subject, mother and daughter continued to knit companionably, until teatime, in agreeable silence.

FORTY-FIVE

T
he trials of Octavia Zinn in her alter'd state as Mrs. Lucius Rumford, wife, mother, and mistress of old Rumford Hall, are of so dark-visagèd a character, and so redolent of despair, that, were I, as the narrator, not confident that the young lady's fortitude in meeting them, and her exemplary Christian behavior throughout, would not inspire rather than horrify the reader, I would throw down my pen forthwith: for of what value is a book, or any manifestation of art, or, indeed, any human experience whatsoever, that does not contribute to the moral betterment of mankind, and the strengthening—nay, universalizing—of the Christian religion? That this sacred mission is inexorably bound up with the chronicle of Progress in our great nation, and that
Christian morality, Progress,
and the
American People,
are to be grasped as one resounding anthem, doubtless sounding through Heaven even now, cannot be too stridently claimed, especially in an epoch in which all standards of behavior, and even, alas, all standards of grammatical discourse, have been thrown into tumult; that it is the Author's sacred obligation, no matter his or her subject, to conform to these requirements, and to present withal a smiling countenance, in the face of all adversity, seems to me incontestable. It is not remiss to quote from a sovereign address made to the Senate at about the time of Octavia's second confinement (her first having blessed Mr. Rumford with a hearty little male heir, splendidly formed, and of perfect health: Godfrey II, named for his belovèd great-grandfather, who held with palsied hands, and stared at with urgent, somewhat protruding rheumy eyes, this hallowed infant), the address delivered, in fact, by the very Albert J. Beveridge who would, in later years, become one of John Quincy Zinn's strongest advocates in Congress, and a vociferous supporter of government-financed scientific research. (Alas, I trust the reader will forgive me in leaping ahead of myself for, fired by my duty to transcribe Octavia's tale, and half tremulous at the challenge, I find that my nerves are all shatter'd this morn, and I scarcely know the date on my calendar, let alone the date of my narrative.) In any case, Senator Beveridge's charge to the Senate is very akin in spirit to this author's sense of her own sacrosanct mission, tho' it emanated, surprisingly, from the crude Midwest, and not from the portals of old Philadelphia or Boston:

Of all our race, God has marked the American people as His chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world. This is the divine Mission of America, and it holds for us all the profit, all the glory, all the happiness possible to man. We are humble trustees of the world's progress, and guardians of its righteous peace!

Thus the good Senator from Indiana; and so, too, it is to be hoped, this yet more humble trustee, your narrator.

 

THE VICISSITUDES OF
fate, heaped upon the pious head of our poor dear Octavia, are such that almost call into question the sovereign justice of the universe: yet, Octavia's final happiness being so profound and lasting, one must concur, as Job did, that the ways of God are not our ways; and to be but dimly understood. That this sweetly docile, resolutely uncomplaining, and perfectly obedient young wife should experience not merely the agonies of several miscarriages (not markedly uncommon in our day), but the death of her beautiful infant daughter Sarah, her second-born, at the age of nine months, as she lay napping in her crib
undisturbed by any prior symptom;
that she should—alas, my eyes well with tears merely with the act of recording such sorrow!—be forced to witness the drowning of her firstborn, Little Godfrey, at the age of seven, on a beauteous and serene summer's day; and that she should suffer the heartrending loss of her belovèd husband, in
the very unitary act of their connubial bliss,
in what was scarcely the thirteenth year of their wedlock—all this would paint a spectacle so deathly of visage, as to be quite unfit for perusal, save for the fact that our heroine
triumphed over despair
in each event, and emerged, in her forty-first year, as serenely unquestioning of her Maker's judgment, and as smooth-brow'd, as she had been in her childish virgin state! Such was Octavia's piety in her suffering, and her resolute refusal to cry her woes aloud, like other weak-minded creatures of her sex, that even the gentleman who was to become her second husband promised to bethink himself of his “irreligious nature,” and “give some possible credence” to the Christian faith, upon which, I am troubled to say, he had, in his youth, turned his back for reasons rather of ignorance than of congenital wickedness. (This second marriage, which I am quite content to see as a
happy event,
despite the bridegroom's free thinking, will take place beyond the temporal confines of this narrative; and the reader is begged to think no more of it.)

 

IT IS STRONGLY
advis'd that the bride shall not succumb to unseemly or ill-timed emotion, in the bridal bed: neither to an outburst of tears, nor to an abrupt expression of fright.
So Octavia read, and was duly perplexed by, in Dr. Mudrick's
The Christian Marriage and Family,
pressed into her hand, with a wordless smile, by Cousin Rowena Kale, some weeks before Octavia's wedding.
Unseemly or ill-timed emotion! Tears, nor—fright!
The impressionable young maiden tormented her curiosity, for many an hour, over the precise meaning of these words: at a time when she might better have occupied herself with more fructifying tasks, such as the completion of her trousseau, and the monogramming of her linen. She could not seek an audience with Mrs. Zinn, who was greatly absorbed at this time, and quite happily so, with a thousand and one details pertaining to the wedding; nor would she have dared approach Mr. Zinn, who, throughout that difficult decade, the Eighties, labored most piteously on his aluminum-sided dirigible, for which he had, alas! such noble hopes—only to see them dashed to the ground, and shattered in a million fragments, when, in 1888, the German aeronaut Wolfert made an ascent in a large dirigible of similar construction,
equipped with a Daimler gasoline engine:
an advance poor John Quincy Zinn was forced to assess as truly revolutionary, tho' it came from abroad, and not out of his native country.

“I know I should not succumb to ignoble self-pity,” Octavia murmured to her only remaining sister, “but I should dearly like, Samantha, to speak with someone—someone, I mean, who has trod this particular pathway before me, and might offer some advice. But Mother has no time for me now; nor does Father; and Great-Aunt Edwina merely presses her books upon me, which, I own, I have already read a dozen times, and very nearly memorized.”

Samantha stared at her sister with unsmiling eyes, as if vexed that Octavia should detain her thusly, in the corridor outside their bedchambers, when the morn was so fresh and promising, and the workshop above the gorge beckoned. She wore her plainest calico gown, with an apron not inordinately fresh; her fine red hair, hastily arranged in a chignon that owed more to practicability than to feminine grace, was covered by a morning cap barren of all lace, and adorned with but a half-dozen spiritless ribbons. Tho', of late, for some quite unfathomable reason, Samantha appeared to be maturing almost daily, and growing, to Octavia's surprised eye, ever more lithesome and pretty, her manner in regard to Octavia was very frequently impatient, and, at its best, condescending, despite the significant fact that Octavia was several years older than Samantha, and ought to have commanded both respect and affection.

Now the malapert young miss said, in response to Octavia's heartfelt declaration: “Dear Octavia, Mother has time for no one
but
you. She rushes about the two households, commandeering all the servants, sending away to the city for every sort of fribble and furbelow, and worrying aloud that all her plans will go asunder, if the
weather
does not cooperate on your wedding day, or Mr. Rumford vanishes into thin air—which, considering the dryness and gravity of that excellent gentleman, I think an unlikely possibility. And Father, our dear Father: naturally he has no time for you, who has no time even for himself. Have you marked of late the o'erabundance of his beard, and its asymmetry; the fatigue that underlies his cheeriest smile; the nervousness and distraction of his manner? The John Quincy Zinn who resides with us, Octavia, is but our father by a happenstance of nature, for which we must be grateful, and not greedy: his true allegiance, like his true identity, resides elsewhere, in the pantheon of the ages, where he shall someday assume his rightful place alongside Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Newton, and Franklin. And you wish,” Samantha murmured, with a cruel pitying half-smile, “
you
wish to discuss wedding-day flummery with him!”

So abash'd was Octavia by this well-delivered speech, and so intimidated by her sister's cool green gaze, that she fairly shrank away, with many profuse apologies; and allowed her impatient sister to pass.

Poor Octavia! It was a measure of her loneliness, within her own family, and the somewhat disordered state of her sensibilities, that, in those weeks preceding the wedding, she succumbed to many a lachrymal outburst, and would dearly have loved to be but a carefree child again, sharing her bedchamber with pretty little Malvinia. “How you have deserted me, my heartless sister!” Octavia murmured, seeing again the winsome image of her younger sister, and the bright-glittering mischief of her periwinkle eyes. “But I shall have my revenge upon you—I daresay—for
I
shall be a married woman within a fortnight, while you—piteous creature—are but a
fallen
woman, scorned by all decent persons, and bent upon the pathway to perdition!”—this ejaculation so little pleasing the unhappy girl, she surrendered to a fresh spasm of weeping, and hid away in her bedchamber, behind a locked door, to be summoned out only by the repeated demands and protestations of Mrs. Zinn: for Madame Blanchet and her young French seamstress had arrived, and the day's fittings must begin.

Miss Octavia Zinn's emotional vagaries, in those confused days before she became Mrs. Lucius Rumford, will afford perhaps a morbid interest, to those harboring a curiosity concerning such extreme states of mind; but cannot have a general interest, nor, I am confident in asserting, would Octavia herself have granted them any value, after she had become initiated into the honorable obligations of wifehood. That she alternated between ecstatic flights of
fancy,
and moments of unmitigated
dread;
that she hurried about the house humming and singing beneath her breath, like a very young child anticipating Christmas, and then stopped short, and began to tremble, and weep, as if knowing that something hideous lay ahead; that she dwelt o'ermuch upon the grave, communing, in her heart, with her belovèd Grandmother Kidde­master (whose spirit, the impressionable young lady halfway believed, dwelt in the enormous rosewood wardrobe with its happy abundance of drawers), or that, in impetuous reaction against such thoughts, she betook herself for long unauthorized walks in the wild forest above the gorge (so startling Mr. Zinn, Samantha, and Nahum, upon one embarrassing occasion, that the inventors believed they had seen a veritable ghost in the woods nearby!—a stumbling aimless figure in a light-colored gown, with a white cap upon its head that quite obscured its face); that she was continually dropping stitches in her knitting, or pricking her fingers with her needle, whereupon her fine Irish linen became dotted with blood—all this is hardly to Octavia's credit, yet has some small historical veracity, and suggests a surprising parallel, inaccurate in other respects, with Constance Philippa, in the weeks and days preceding
her
wedding. Indeed, so unbalanced did Octavia's judgment become, and so beclouded by spurious sentiment, that she found herself yearning for the companionship of her lost older sister, whose abstergent wit, and scorn for such frivolities as dress fittings, she believed would be most refreshing. But how dismaying, how unspeakable, Constance Philippa's crime!—to have broken the sacred bonds of matrimony
upon her very wedding night,
and to have brought such disgrace upon her family: for which she might never be forgiven, save perhaps in the other world. (And Octavia even found herself thinking, with a wistful melancholy, that she should not have minded, even, seeking solace from Deirdre: she might have crept into her bed, and the two of them might have shivered and hugged and wept, and Octavia could then speak of her own sudden terror of being
orphaned
—of all the imaginable fates, the most cruel.)