A Bloodsmoor Romance by Joyce Carol Oates
As early as Wichita, it might have been noted that Philippe Fox’s voice was becoming more naturally guttural; by the time he reached Grand Junction, his eyebrows, always heavy, dark, and brooding, had become more prominent still; drifting into the Utah territory, on horseback, in the company of two desperadoes (later discovered to be wanted for murder, in Hays City), he had acquired considerable musculature, particularly in shoulders, upper arms, thighs, and calves. During the months he spent at the South Spring Ranch, it may have been the case that the practic’d eye of old John Chisum “smelled a rat,” as it were—this being the result of Mr. Fox’s initial dislike of chewing tobacco: but, if so, no taunts or accusations were ever made. “Your Mr. Fox is a true gentleman,” little Sallie Chisum told her uncle, sighing mightily. “Ah, would there were more like him!” Whereupon the grizzled cattleman observed, with a droll twinkle of his eye: “Why, my dear, would you wish the world depopulated, in a single generation?” Yet, as I have said, there were no taunts, or accusations, nor even ribald hints, pertaining to Mr. Fox’s virility, or lack thereof.
With the years, however, Philippe Fox grew e’er-more lean, and hard, and wiry, and stealthy, and resilient. He could sleep in the open, in the raw winds of March; he could sleep on horseback, or standing up; or in jail, wrapped in a filth-encrusted blanket. His gun hand grew uncannily steady, whether he was shooting at slow-circling hawks, or fence posts, or another man, who happened to be shooting at him: and his chill dark eyes grew steady as well, and appeared, at times, to have no human need for blinking. His fine dark hair began to gray at the temples, but was otherwise untouched by age. His brow crinkled; and faint white lines appeared about his eyes, and bracketing his mouth; yet, withal, his skin possessed an unusual smoothness, and took very well to the sun. By the time of the tyrannical Mr. Plummer, at the Bosque Grande ranch, Mr. Fox was assuredly a male, in every particular: the growth, and expansion, and forcible protuberance, of the inner female organ, being now nearly complete, and having attained a length of some five or six inches, in repose. (This tubelike structure, of solid flesh, boneless, thickly veined, and evidently lacking in sinew, could attain a remarkable length when flushed with blood, and heat—some nine or ten inches.) That the transformation of the interior to the outer was so gradual, surely accounts for the fact that Philippe Fox himself scarcely took note of the curious phenomenon, and felt very little intrinsic disgust, as, certainly, he would have done, as Constance Philippa Zinn. Concomitant with the extraordinary protuberance, there was a reversal of growth, in the torso: what had once been the bosom of Constance Philippa, now had flattened, or had, at the very most, a sinewy muscular curve, by no means of a feminine aspect. It must have been the case that, in solitude, Philippe Fox did contemplate the nether stretches of his body, perhaps with amaz’d chagrin, or a morbid brooding, or simple wonderment: but, as Constance Philippa Zinn, he had known so very little about his own body, and had, in truth, never inspected it, or dared touch it, that it is even possible he did not know, with any exactitude, whether a true change had occurred or not; or whether this forcible expansion, of the secret female organ, outward, was perhaps an altogether normal feature, analogous to certain female problems, or conditions, he had heard whisper’d, in Bloodsmoor. Even then, I am pleased to say, a natural gentility reigned, and Mr. Fox shrank from touching himself, save in the most pragmatic of ways; and if it occurred to him that this hideous, yet formidable, genital apparatus might be put to some use, in regard to the opposite sex (which, by this time, would pertain to the female sex), he happily did not act upon that notion; and was not to indulge his thoughts in such wise, until after his return to Bloodsmoor, when his heart was flooded with hope for the rescue of Delphine Martineau, and his mind with feverish schemes.
And yet—how accidental, his happening upon the notice of Great-Aunt Edwina’s death, in a newspaper discarded at his elbow! “The Fox” at that time having beat a very hasty, and graceless, retreat, from Arizona: not many minutes ahead of certain vengeful ruffians, who had already “settled scores,” in their words, with the Deputy Marshal Kingston, and Governor Willis. Thus he found himself in the Baldwin Hotel, with but $40 in his pocket, and some gold dust, and a single gun, and the somewhat rumpled clothes on his back; and, but look!—he picked up a newspaper, and leafed idly through it, and came upon the old woman’s obituary, and a statement that bade him return—with the promise of an inheritance.
Near-penniless tho’ he was, and without a friend in the entire West, he stood erect, and flung back his proud head, and exclaimed: “Never!”
EIGHTY-ONE
Would that Philippe Fox had held true to his word, and refused to return to Bloodsmoor: but such, unfortunately, was not to be the case.
Tho’ “The Fox” had once been counted “as good as dead,” by former associates and acquaintances in Arizona, it was with an extraordinary burst of life, and malodorous energy, that he began to appear in the vicinity of sombre old Mt. Espérance; upon several bold occasions, Mr. Ormond being absent, he gained entrance to the house itself, by way of the suggestible kitchen staff. It was his strategy to make contact with the deranged woman by means of secret missives, carried to her bower, by a treacherous servant, in which he initially introduced himself, as a companion of Miss Constance Philippa Zinn (now in permanent residence on the West Coast), from whom he had heard a great deal about her: the memory of sweet Delphine Martineau, of the laughing brown eyes and sly dimpled cheeks, being sacrosanct in Constance Philippa’s heart.
Thus the bizarre and immoral “courtship” was undertaken; and if we might applaud Delphine’s early resistance—the unhappy but loyal wife did not reply to Philippe Fox’s first three letters—we cannot but sigh with resignation, as, Fox’s entreaties ever growing more emboldened, and more resourceful, the invalid did succumb: at the first, stoutly asserting that she was, for better and worse, in sickness and in health, married to Justin Ormond, and that, being a Christian woman, she could not take her vows casually; and then, as the weeks progressed, and Fox declared himself by no means a temporary presence in Bloodsmoor, but, as her “devoted courtier,” as permanent a presence as she might wish, the disloyal wife and mother began to waver, and, in her scribbled missives, hint that—perhaps—she might respond to his plea, and study him, as best she could, on the lawn beneath her window, at an appoint’d time.
Well! I trust I am not being o’erly cynical, in observing that, as Jesus in His wisdom bade us not to gaze upon one another, with lust, lest we commit adultery in our hearts, so it was inevitable, should Mrs. Ormond comply with Mr. Fox’s petition, to gaze upon him, in outlaw circumstances, lust would be experienced: and adultery committed, in the heart.
And thus it was.
And thus there was initiated one of the ugliest of Bloodsmoor scandals of recent decades: the more intolerable, in that Philippe Fox was not only intimately associated with Kiddemaster Hall, but was amongst Bloodsmoor persons of consequence, believed to be Constance Philippa in disguise. So that the criminal elopement, which took place on a rain-lash’d, gusty All Hallows Eve, was widely talked of, as not merely adulterous, but unnatural.
ALAS! I CANNOT but deem it an act of God’s great mercy, that John Quincy Zinn had become, with the darkening skies of autumn, increasingly indifferent to the vanities of the world: so mesmerized with his task of achieving the formula for a synthesis of the perpetual-motion engine, and the government’s request for unfailing detonations at a distance, that he had not the energy to be wounded by his wife’s eccentric behavior, in the New England states (where she had joined forces with the hellish pair, Mrs. Abba Goold Woolson, and the “Presidential candidate” Miss Elaine Cottler, in their muckraking activities in the Dress Reform Movement); and had not, of course, the ability to care greatly, about his youngest daughter’s conversion to Christian standards of charity, love, and peaceableness of spirit, no more than he could, about the sinister Philippe Fox, and his carnal appetites. True, J.Q.Z. was a dying man, and may well
So it came about, albeit after numerous petitions, that the suggestible Mrs. Ormond consented to peer out the single small window of her room, at her courtier some distance below on the grass: that interloper who did not, of course, dare to appear in wholesome daylight; but only by the stealthy light of the moon. It may have been that the faithless wife and mother imagined her Christian fortitude to be of sufficient quality, to allow her to withstand temptation; but, as she gazed through the window (a small, but quaint, orifice, oval in shape, dimmed by cobwebs, and perhaps twenty inches in circumference), at the comely figure of Philippe Fox on the lawn below, something wicked evidently transpired in her heart, and the tragedy was conceived.
With self-conscious dignity Philippe Fox emerged from the shadows, to stand boldly in the moonlight, and to lift his handsome face toward the window. Tho’ he could not see the object of his illicit regard, the expression of rapt—nay, mesmerized—passion, that radiated across his strong-boned countenance, was unmistakable.
“Delphine!” So he recklessly spoke, lifting one gloved hand: with such compelling force that Mrs. Ormond acted at once in like manner, raising and pressing her hand against the window pane, that the white palm expose itself, to the hungry eye of the man below.
THE RESCUE—WHICH WAS, in truth, no more than a sordid elopement—took place some weeks later, when, by prearrangement, Philippe Fox gained entrance to Mt. Espérance, and informed the astonish’d Mr. Ormond that he had been sent “to fetch his wife back home: for her mother was gravely ill.”
Mr. Ormond, a flaccid-faced gentleman in his fifties, with a veined nose, muttonchop whiskers closely trimmed, and a small high rotund belly, grew visibly pale at the sight of this intruder; and shrank slightly from him, tho’ Fox’s pistol was well hidden inside his coat.
“Sir, I fail to understand,” Mr. Ormond said, steadying himself against a chair; “you say you have been sent, to fetch my wife back home? But she is my wife, sir; and Mt. Espérance is her home.”
Philippe Fox advanced upon him, smiling, and, as Mr. Ormond cowered, strode past, to the broad spiral staircase, saying the while: “You are wise, Mr. Ormond, to raise no objections, since Mrs. Ormond is greatly wanted, at home, and I have been instructed, not to return without her. And so I must act quickly; and beg your pardon, that I have no time for idle persiflage.” Whereupon the arrogant interloper ascended the stairs, taking them two or three at a time, whilst Mr. Ormond, greatly agitated, could not think, whether to follow him upstairs, or run back down, to seek aid from the servants. (In truth, Mr. Ormond was suffering at this time from an undiagnosed ailment of the nerves, bowels, and spleen, which severely exacerbated his gout, and his temperamental inclination toward the morbid: so that, staring aghast at the lithe, sinuous figure of Philippe Fox, he could not have sworn, whether this creature was a mortal man, or a phantom.)
While the distraught husband stood paralyzed on the stair, Philippe Fox made his way with great alacrity to the third floor of the mansion, and to the turret: and, commanding Mrs. Ormond to stand back from the door, as much as she was capable, he drew out his gun, and fired once, twice, and a third time, that he might destroy the lock and swing the heavy door open, with no difficulty.
Thus it happened, that rude gunshots shattered the majestic calm of Mt. Espérance, one of the great old homes of Bloodsmoor!—and, to their shame be it recorded, every servant in Mr. Ormond’s employ remained in hiding, out of quavering cowardice, or prearrangement with the seducer.
Poor Mr. Ormond screamed in terror for help, that he might be saved from being murdered “by the fiend,” but no help was forthcoming.
“It cannot be—I will not allow it—I am master here—I am not to be shot down, in my own house—” the slack-faced husband babbled, the while grasping at the stairway railing, as if he had turned to stone.
Yet, upstairs, Philippe Fox heard not a word, and seemed to have no care, that he might be apprehended and thrown into prison, for this intolerable trespass. “Come, Delphine,” he said, his deep voice but lightly trembling, “we have a considerable distance to travel, and the hour is late.” He strode into the dim-lit bower, which smelled, alas, of time, and dust, and sickness, and neglect; and with great gallantry extended his arm, that Mrs. Ormond might grasp it. “Come, come! Too many years have passed,” Fox murmured.
After but a moment’s hesitation, the faithless wife took the proffered arm; and leaned heavily onto it, with a sob; and allowed herself to be led out into the corridor.
Was there ever so crass, so emphatic, so public a fall!
Ah, but was this woman Delphine Martineau, the pretty, vivacious, brown-eyed miss of so many years ago? A dead-white, drawn, somewhat ravaged beauty, the which one might have had to examine closely, to see it were beauty; eyes puffed and red-rimmed, from crying; a mouth that appeared distended, in a smile of fear, or an indecipherable grimace; and, most alarming of all, the once-lustrous mahogany hair now liberally threaded with gray, and falling in a disheveled tumble to her waist.
Philippe Fox gazed upon this apparition, and stared, and, inexplicably, felt his heart as wondrously pierced, as if this woman of mature years, and desperate straits, were but a high-spirited girl of seventeen: and no time at all had passed!
“My Delphine!” he murmured, agape, grasping both her cold hands in his. “My girl! It is you! But come, come: the hour is late: our carriage awaits, and the remainder of our lives.”
And so, this infamous couple descended the stair, upon which, near the first-floor landing, the betrayed husband now sat, his face gone piteously slack, and his eyes bulging with terror. Unhappy Mr. Ormond!—the wretched scion of a once-great Pennsylvania house! Never was he to recover from the dismayed horror of this All Hallows Eve, on which, as he would babble and mutter to all, a phantom murderer gained entrance to his house, and fired bullets at his head, and made off with his protesting wife—whom he was never to see again.
AND SO PHILIPPE Fox and his belovèd Delphine vanished from Bloodsmoor: to the Alaskan gold mines, it was said: or to Old Mexico, or Argentina, where they lived like royalty. In any case they never returned to our historic Bloodsmoor, and sent no communications, tho’, in time, I scarce know how, the sinister Fox managed to collect his share, after taxes and attorneys’ fees, of the great Kiddemaster inheritance.
EIGHTY-TWO
It was upon the occasion of the reading of her aunt’s eccentric will, that Mrs. Prudence Zinn, knowing herself again disinherited, experienced a most queer, and pleasantly lightsome, release in her heart. So I am free—I am freed, the astonish’d woman thought, all the while maintaining her posture of rigidity, and her expression of stolid, and, as it were, regal disdain. Tho’ these words pierced her consciousness with an uncanny authority, and tho’ she scarce comprehended their import, she knew them to be incontestable; and prophetic.
“I am freed—of them.”
ALAS, HOW SHALL we describe the trajectory of Romance? How shall we, obliged to toil in mere words, seek to illume the fleet, fluttering, gossamer sensations, elusive as the hummingbird, that course along the veins, and swell the captive heart, of the credulous? It may have been, that, seated in the Golden Oak room of her father’s great house, hearing with but a detached interest the lurid tale (which did not, in truth, surprise Prudence as much as it surprised the others: tho’ she would not have guessed the rejected infant to have been Deirdre), whereby Edwina Kiddemaster made public her disgrace, yet, withal, her vainglorious nobility, Prudence cast her mind back, and back, and back, to a fateful meeting in Frothingham Square, in the study of her godfather Mr. Bayard. (Alas, long dead!—long dead.) It may have been that the now-agèd woman half closed her eyes, not in pious reverence, in regard to her deceased aunt, but in recollection of the moment
And, it may have been, as Basil Miller’s sonorous voice unfolded the remarkable confession, of that other doomed romantic heart, Prudence Zinn enjoyed, with distant amusement, the recollection of one or two stanzas of verse, composed by a woman now long deceased—ah, how very long, it would not do to consider!—gay, tinkling, blithe, convivial, feverish, frantic: I am immortal! I know it! I feel it! Hope floods my heart with delight! Running on air, mad with life, dizzy, reeling, Upward I mount—faith is sight, life is feeling, Hope is the day-star of night— And on and on the happy words tumbled, a girl’s voice, a girl’s shouting exuberant voice, gradually dimming, and fading, to be replaced by young Miller’s words, which seemed to Prudence both pitiless, and pitiable.
I am freed of them, Prudence inwardly declared, and of it.
ONE DAY, NOT many months before, whilst sipping her morning coffee, and perusing the pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer (a newspaper she read half secretly, in obedience, still, to the dictates of her deceased father, who had entered into a bitter feud, as a consequence of political differences, with the paper’s owner, and expressly forbade it on “Kiddemaster soil”), Prudence came by chance upon an article, and a photograph, of such offensiveness, that she nearly spilt—nay, she did spill—her coffee, and heard herself laugh angrily aloud.