A Bloodsmoor Romance by Joyce Carol Oates

  But Great-Aunt Edwina did not hear; nor did she, mercifully, notice Samantha’s departure.

  I SHALL TELL everyone this revelation, Samantha thought, as the horses pulled the Kidde­master carriage back home, and her heart pumped with a gleeful intoxication, and the very tip of her nose went waxen-cold with excitement; and then, when the Octagonal House came into view, and a certain wintry desolation struck her soul—despite the attractiveness of Mr. Zinn’s house, and the dear familiarity of each window, each cornice, each lightning rod—she thought I shall tell no one this revelation.

  And, to Samantha’s credit, this is exactly what she did.

  EIGHTEEN

  Once there were five Zinn daughters dwelling harmoniously with their loving parents, in the Octagonal House on the river: a scant twelve-month later, there were but two daughters remaining.

  The grief of losing one was soon deepened by the all but incomprehensible grief of losing three!

  For, as if following their stepsister’s infelicitous example, Constance Philippa and Malvinia soon fled decent society—by what flagitious routes, for what unspeakable purposes, I can scarcely bring myself to say.

  BUT DID THE Baron reject his fiancée, the reader must naturally inquire, fearing the worst; and did the reckless Malvinia elope with her most attractive suitor, Cheyney Du Pont de Nemours? We have reason to believe that the Baron Adolf von Mainz, though devoted to Constance Philippa and her family, and particularly indebted to Mr. Vaughan Kidde­master for certain financial coups of no explicit interest to our history, did suffer the agonies of a reconsideration (however unarticulated) of his decision to align his illustrious family with that of his fiancée’s—for one must assume that the Baron, despite a certain insouciant gallantry of manner, was a highly sensitive gentleman; and it must have offended his aesthetic sense, as well as his sense of decorum, to see the names Zinn and Kidde­master hawked in the two-penny press, and gossiped over in even the best society. (How pertinacious gossip is in our time! One can hardly credit its longevity, in a dazed age in which fame and notoriety soon blur, and achievement and sin are oft confused.) More than once that worthy gentleman sent a message to Miss Zinn, explaining that he was indisposed, or suddenly called away on business, and consequently unable to accompany her on one of their obligatory visits to the homes of relatives, for, escorted by Prudence Zinn, the proud mother of the bride-to-be, and, less frequently, by John Quincy Zinn, the engaged couple was expected to visit virtually every related family in the southeastern corner of the state, and in Wilmington, Delaware: Whittons, Kales, Bayards, Gilpins, Woodruffs, Millers. “The trapped man naturally resents being dragged about as a sort of trophy,” Constance Philippa said with a grim smile, holding one of his messages of deep florid regret out to her mother. “One would hardly be surprised—one would almost be sympathetic—if he chose to flee to his homeland.” Mrs. Zinn was not amused by her eldest daughter’s jest, nor diverted by her challenge. “I forbid you to utter such sentiments,” she said, taking the stiff sheet of paper from Constance Philippa, and noting with an irritated satisfaction the propriety of the von Mainz coat-of-arms, in modest gilt, and the graceful contours of the Baron’s hand, “even under your breath.”

  And it was the case as well that Mr. de Nemours, perhaps under the instruction of his wealthy father Irénée (of the firm of Du Pont de Nemours, Père, Fils & Cie, of New York City), stayed away from Bloodsmoor for an awkward period of time, despite his obvious infatuation for the beautiful Malvinia. His silence as well as his absence struck Malvinia to the core, in her pride rather than her heart; and, as her pride was far more vulnerable than her heart, because more greatly indulged, one can gauge the degree of her consternation. (“I am weary of this constant round of parties, teas, dinners, and balls,” Malvinia cried to Octavia, throwing herself down on their canopied bed, and letting her lovely hair tumble in a most unladylike spill across the pillows. “This very afternoon I prowled about Grandfather Kidde­master’s library—as, I begin to recall, I did in late childhood—and quite astonished myself by the joy with which I snatched certain volumes off the shelves—a joy and a hunger combined—for the mind seeks nourishing food, as well as the stomach; and what is more nourishing than an hour spent in the company, not of the vapid Mr. de Nemours, but of the great William Shakespeare, or Plato, or Oliver Goldsmith?” And Octavia, though undeceived as to the cause of her sister’s passionate outburst, did but assent in kindly silence.)

  Yet the irony was to be, that the Baron did not extricate himself from his obligations to the Kidde­masters, and was the more aggrieved—the more wounded. It is a measure of the perversity of Constance Philippa’s behavior that she was not, indeed, rejected by her fiancé: he did in fact fulfill his side of the wedding contract, and take Constance Philippa Zinn as his lawfully wedded wife, at the flower-bedecked altar of our picturesque old Trinity Church, in the autumn of 1880, as if nothing untoward had ever happened in her family—as if no invisible prowling demon had been loos’d. For it was not to be Miss Zinn who disappeared from all that was familiar and known, but the Baroness von Mainz . . . !

  By a similar irony, within that very week, the impulsive Malvinia cast her lot with a gentleman whose name, though known to society, was hardly known in any intimate sense to her family: in short, not the handsome young heir to the de Nemours fortune, but a stranger to all of Bloodsmoor—a stranger, save for his somewhat meretricious fame, to the drawing rooms of Philadelphia.

  (ONE CAN IMAGINE the impact of this double—nay, triple—destruction upon a single Christian family: the bewildered heartbreak of the parents, the shame and sorrow of the remaining sisters. Indeed, the deaths of Constance Philippa and Malvinia would have been more welcome, and far more merciful, than the fates that overtook them; and the humiliation (for humbling is, perhaps, too mild a term) that deepened the maledict cloud already obscuring the heavens above Kidde­master Hall.)

  IN THE LONG busy months of her engagement Constance Philippa had ample opportunity to acquaint herself, through her reading, with the sacred duties of Wifehood soon to be hers; she was often to be found hidden away in a corner, alone or with sweet-faced Pip sprawled asleep on her lap, studying one or another of the books Mrs. Zinn, Great-Aunt Edwina, and other female members of her family had pressed upon her. How diligently she read them!—how her forehead creased as she turned back a page, and reread, her lips sometimes shaping the words aloud! The treacherous winds of January and February subsided to the merely cold winds of March; and then, with a wondrous abruptness characteristic of our part of the world, it was early spring—and then spring; and then summer. If the Baron had demonstrated, by an unfailingly subtle restraint in his passion, that he had had thoughts about the situation, about marrying the elder sister of a young lady whose fate was so sensational as Deirdre’s, he naturally did not speak of these thoughts to his fiancée, or to anyone in the family; and, to the quiet joy of the Zinns and the Kidde­masters, it soon became apparent, as the months passed, as winter shaded into spring and all the numbed, sleeping world awoke, that the Baron’s high regard for Constance Philippa and for her family had triumphed over all indecision. Not only would the young couple marry according to plan, but the Baron was reported to have expressed, with his usual cosmopolitan gallantry, and yet not without a trace of sincere emotion withal, the wish that the wedding be held even sooner. (It was Malvinia to whom he addressed this surprising observation, at an evening reception in the palatial Main Line home of Mr. and Mrs. Hambleton Kale. To Constance Philippa’s annoyance, and yet to her relief as well, the Baron spoke with far less restraint to Malvinia, and was actually observed smiling and laughing in her presence, while he was quite stiff in the presence of his fiancée, as, indeed, she was in his. Perhaps it had to do with the disparity in their heights, for Constance Philippa “towered” over him, as she expressed it, by at least three inches; perhaps it had to do with the formality of his regard for her—for she was, after all, singled out from all of womankind as his fia
ncée, and therefore a sacred being. Nonetheless Baron von Mainz evidently told Malvinia that “your American engagements are extraordinarily long,” and the implied meaning of his statement was unmistakable: the young man was so in love with Constance Philippa he wanted to marry her at once! Or so Malvinia hastened to report to her sister, who blushed ferociously when she heard, and had no reply at all. Mrs. Zinn, to whom all this was dutifully repeated, made only the observation that it was hardly proper for Malvinia to behave as a sort of confidante to her sister’s fiancé: such intimate exchanges must cease at once. “I thought you might be pleased,” Malvinia exclaimed, “by the Baron’s very impatience, for surely it argues sincerity?—and affection?” “It argues,” Mrs. Zinn countered evenly, “a certain want of delicacy, and a blindness to our Philadelphia customs I should not like generally known, as the Baron’s prospective mother-in-law.” It was Constance Philippa who observed in her dry droll manner, uncaring of the effect upon Mrs. Zinn: “Ah!—the poor man simply wants to get the ceremony over with, as quickly as possible, before he truly does change his mind.”)

  Yet Baron von Mainz had not changed his mind, and preparations for the wedding continued, gaining momentum as the season warmed. Constance Philippa now spent all her time being driven about in the Kidde­masters’ handsome brougham, sipping tea at one or another relative’s home, attending dinners, luncheons, and balls (at which she and her fiancé danced with a most agreeable marionette grace); or, at home, being fitted for her wedding dress, or perusing, with an increasing fanaticism, the dozen or more books—including Dr. Naphey’s The Physical Life of Women—pressed upon her. She oscillated between frenetic activity, and bone-weary indolence; between a lighthearted, rather shrill merriment and saturnine despondency. She read aloud, in private, these powerful words of the poet Shelley—

  Rough wind, that moanest loud

  Grief too sad for song;

  Wild wind, when sullen cloud

  Knells all the night long;

  Sad storm, whose tears are vain,

  Bare woods, whose branches strain,

  Deep caves and dreary main,—

  Wail, for the world’s wrong!

  —Eliza Leslie North’s Maiden, Wife, and Mother; Mary Manderly Ogden’s The Christian Mother; Dr. Elias Riddle’s Counsels on the Nature and Hygiene of Womanhood; Alice C. Dodds’s A Letter of Advice to a Young Bride; and, of course, Great-Aunt Edwina’s volumes, which the heedless Constance Philippa had neglected to study in the past—The Young Lady’s Friend: A Compendium of Correct Forms, and A Guide to Proper Christian Behavior Amongst Young Persons, and, most valuable of all, as she approached the threshold of matrimony, and prepared to exchange Maidenhood for Wifehood, the best-selling The Christian House & Home, which elucidated, in a tone much like that of Edwina Kidde­master’s speaking voice, such priceless advice—

  The young bride crosses the threshold, not into a mere house, but into a home, which it is her obligation to make blossom as if ’twere a garden. How sacred the mission, to be the warmth about which hearts gather; to strengthen, brighten, and beautify existence; to be the light of others’ souls, and the good angel of others’ paths! And, a mission even more holy, to be a Mother: to give birth to infant immortals!

  She read; she gorged herself; and yet was left famished, and susceptible to childish bad moods, that quite astonished the household. Her high-handedness with Octavia became inexcusable; her sarcasm with Samantha shocking; the pettiness and transparent jealousy of her relations with Malvinia infuriating—though oft amusing, as Malvinia mockingly observed. (“She fears her dwarf-bridegroom will look upon his sister-in-law with more affection than he looks upon his bride,” Malvinia told the scandalized Octavia, “and, if she transforms herself into a veritable dragonness, who, pray, would blame him? The Baron is human—or, at any rate, one is encouraged to believe so.”)

  One afternoon, while being fitted for her wedding dress, Constance Philippa read aloud from Dr. Riddle’s volume, and quite distressed Madame Blanchet and her young assistant, who scarcely knew how to respond. In a dry, droll, sardonic tone unbecoming in one of her station, and certainly in one being fitted in a lovely China silk dress, with fagoting, handmade lace, latticework, and lace epaulettes, Constance Philippa read: “ ‘In our most unitary of acts, which is the epitome and pleroma of life, we have the most intense of all affirmations of God’s love for us as creatures, and His will that husband and wife participate in a true pangenesis. The supreme holiness of the wedding bond, symbolized in the solemn exchange of rings, is a measure of the holiness of God’s bond with His creation. . . .’ ”

  At this very moment Mrs. Zinn happened to enter the room and, blushing an angry beet-red, snatched the volume out of her daughter’s hand. But, surprisingly, she said very little about the incident (tho’ her grown daughter fairly cowered in fear—Constance Philippa was most frightened of her mother’s wrath), other than to observe that it was unfortunate, knowing the propensity of Madame Blanchet to carry tales from one house to another, that Constance Philippa had behaved as she had. “I am very sorry, Mother,” Constance Philippa said, biting her lips. “I am very sorry for everything.”

  A TRUE PANGENESIS . . . the epitome and pleroma of life . . . the supreme holiness of the wedding bond: what, Constance Philippa tortured herself, did it mean? What did the words mean? She was canny enough at the age of twenty-three to have determined, on her own, that the wedding bond led in most instances to babies; and that the babies (as dimly she recalled from Mrs. Zinn’s numerous confinements, for of course Mrs. Zinn had had several stillborn infants, in addition to having given birth successfully to her four daughters) evidently had something to do with the mother’s body; and that this phenomenon was a mystery, a blessing, a sacred duty, and at the same time a cross all women must bear, as part of God’s commandment. What the masculine sex had to do with all this Constance Philippa had yet to determine, but she supposed, vaguely and optimistically, as she supposed she would come to love the Baron after they were married, that she would learn: perhaps he would tell her.

  Perhaps, she thought with a wild spurt of hope, Dr. Riddle’s promise of pangenesis is nothing more and nothing less than the revelation of this profound secret, to be entrusted to the female sex only after the wedding vows have been taken?

  IN ADDITION TO the marriage and etiquette manuals, Constance Philippa had also been given, by Narcissa Gilpin, a pretty little volume by Mrs. Katharine Lee Bates called The Wedding-Day Book; or, The Congratulations of the Poets, in which she read after her other, more serious reading fatigued her, or after she returned from an afternoon of fifteen or twenty teas, her head ringing with exhaustion, and that sly old tune A fox went out tripping and lilting through her very being. The Wedding-Day Book was a sort of day-book with a poem for each and every day of the year, all the poems having reference to love, weddings, and marital bliss. This volume, attractively covered in crimson papier-mâché sprinkled with tiny gold roses, Mrs. Zinn did not at all mind being read aloud: in fact, on many an evening in those months before the Zinn family was to be irrevocably shattered, and never, indeed, altogether a “family” again, all the Zinns gathered in the cozy firelit parlor after supper, to read aloud from The Wedding-Day Book: even Mr. Zinn himself, who had always an especial love of reading and reciting poetry, and who knew well that the domestic hour, close by the hearth, was one of the blessèd features of our American life, rivaling for him the attractions of the workshop and its lonely, exhilarating toil.

  Mrs. Bates’s The Wedding-Day Book! I remember that compact little volume well, its square-cut pages, its gilt edges, its floral endpapers and smart crimson cover! A gift for many a young engaged lady of our time, and one which, it must be imagined, is prized throughout the years as both a keepsake, and a continuing memorial to the power of love—hardly spurned and cast aside as it was in the case of Constance Philippa. (The volume was to be found in the trash by one of the Zinn servants, who promptly rescued it, and, being of so sentimenta
l and loving a nature herself, and so attached to the Zinn family, the distraught girl attempted to clean the stained cover with petroleum naphtha—a grease solvent employed by the servants in laundering Mr. Zinn’s workclothes—and badly damaged it. But The Wedding-Day Book did survive; it survives still.)

  The Zinns passed the book from one to the other, and read aloud, sometimes with pride, oft with a brimming eye, for the impending wedding was a great event in their lives, in which regret, and relief, and joy, and melancholy warred. Mrs. Zinn opened the volume to a favorite poem, and read these moving lines from Langhorne—

  Should erring nature casual faults disclose,

  Wound not the breast that harbors your repose;

  For every grief that breast from you shall prove,

  Is one link broken in the chain of love.

  Octavia, her plump cheeks flushed with pleasure, her voice trembling with the privilege of good poetry, found it difficult to make a selection, and often paged through the book for many minutes, while her mother and sisters chided her lovingly, even as they continued with their sewing; and Mr. Zinn, stroking Pip, who climbed lazily about his knees, or perched atop his shoulder, said in his kindly voice: “I am sure, dear Octavia, that any selection of yours and Mrs. Bates will prove edifying to us.”

  Octavia then chose a poem by Mrs. Craik, or Phoebe Cary, or the great Longfellow—

  Sail forth into the sea of life,

  O gentle, loving, trusting wife.

  And safe from all adversity

  Upon the bosom of that sea

  Thy comings and thy goings be!

  this recited, with a shy, moist-eyed glance at Constance Philippa.

  Malvinia usually made her selections beforehand, choosing two or three poems in place of one, for that young lady read splendidly, and had even, at about this time, begun elocution and acting lessons in the city; so that all the Zinns—even Constance Philippa—found her performances wonderfully gratifying, and excused her rudeness in fidgeting through Octavia’s. She always sought out the fragments from Shakespeare which Mrs. Bates had wisely included in her anthology, glowing gems of sagacity of a quality not generally associated with the great Bard (a genius, as all attest, but of an erratic and even slovenly temperament, and betraying at times a disposition quite irreligious—nay, atheistic); she read these lines in as passionate and ringing a voice as if she were on the stage of the Varieties Theatre, portraying the doomed Ophelia, or the still more grievously doomed Desdemona—