A Bloodsmoor Romance Read online

  DEDICATION

  For Elaine Showalter

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Of the divers books consulted in the preparation of this definitive chronicle, some four stand out, as deserving of especial note; these being, The Ladies’ Wreath, A Magazine Devoted to Literature, Industry, and Religion, Mrs. S. T. Martyn, ed. (New York, 1847); The Wedding-Day Book, arranged by Katharine Lee Bates (Boston, 1882); The Sociology of Invention, S. C. Gilfillan (Chicago, 1935); and Psychical Research, Science, and Religion, Stanley De Brath (London, 1925). Frequent quotations in this volume, particularly of verse, are liberally drawn from the excellent books assembled by Mrs. Martyn and Miss Bates, to whose literary labors, and bounties, I am very much in debt.

  Oh the Earth was made for lovers, for damsel, and hopeless swain,

  For sighing, and gentle whispering, and unity made of twain.

  All things do go a-courting, in earth, or sea, or air,

  God hath made nothing single but thee in His world so fair!

  The bride, and then the bridegroom, the two, and then the one,

  Adam, and Eve, his consort, the moon, and then the sun;

  The life doth prove the precept, who obey shall happy be,

  Who will not serve the sovereign, be hanged on fatal tree.

  The high do seek the lowly, the great do seek the small,

  None cannot find who seeketh, on this terrestrial ball;

  The bee doth court the flower, the flower his suit receives,

  And they make merry wedding, whose guests are hundred leaves;

  The wind doth woo the branches, the branches they are won,

  And the father fond demandeth the maiden for his son. . . .

  The worm doth woo the mortal, death claims a living bride,

  Night unto day is married, morn unto eventide;

  Earth is a merry damsel, and heaven a knight so true,

  And Earth is quite coquettish, and beseemeth in vain to sue. . . .

  There’s Sarah, and Eliza, and Emeline so fair,

  And Harriet, and Susan, and she with curling hair!

  Thine eyes are sadly blinded, but yet thou mayest see

  Six true, and comely maidens sitting upon the tree;

  Approach that tree with caution, then up it boldly climb,

  And seize the one thou lovest, nor care for space, or time!

  Then bear her to the greenwood, and build for her a bower,

  And give her what she asketh, jewel, or bird, or flower—

  And bring the fife, and trumpet, and beat upon the drum—

  And bid the world Goodmorrow, and go to glory home!

  —EMILY DICKINSON, 1850

  CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I: THE OUTLAW BALLOON

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  II: THE PASSIONATE COURTSHIP

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  III: THE UNLOOS’D DEMON

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  IV: THE YANKEE PEDLAR’S SON

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  V: THE WIDE WORLD

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  VI: IVORY-BLACK; OR, THE SPIRIT WORLD

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  VII: “UNSUNG AMERICANS ...”

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  FIFTY-TWO

  FIFTY-THREE

  FIFTY-FOUR

  VIII: THE MARK OF THE BEAST

  FIFTY-FIVE

  FIFTY-SIX

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  FIFTY-NINE

  SIXTY

  SIXTY-ONE

  SIXTY-TWO

  SIXTY-THREE

  SIXTY-FOUR

  SIXTY-FIVE

  SIXTY-SIX

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  IX: “ADIEU! ’TIS LOVE’S LAST GREETING”

  SIXTY-NINE

  SEVENTY

  SEVENTY-ONE

  SEVENTY-TWO

  SEVENTY-THREE

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  SEVENTY-SIX

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  SEVENTY-NINE

  EIGHTY

  EIGHTY-ONE

  EIGHTY-TWO

  EIGHTY-THREE

  EIGHTY-FOUR

  NOVELS BY JOYCE CAROL OATES

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  I

  The Outlaw Balloon

  ONE

  Our history of the remarkable Zinn family, to end upon the final bold stroke of midnight, December 31, 1899, begins some twenty years earlier, on that beauteous September afternoon, in the golden haze of autumn, 1879—ah, now so long past!—when, to the confus’d shame and horror of her loving family and the consternation of all of Bloodsmoor, Miss Deirdre Louisa Zinn, the adopted daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Quincy Zinn, betook herself on an impetuous walk, with no companion, and was, by daylight, abducted from the grounds belonging to the stately home of her grandparents, historic old Kidde­master Hall.

  Well may you blink and draw back in alarm at that crude word, abducted: and yet, I fear, there is no other, to be employed with any honesty.

  Indeed, as the authorized chronicler of the Zinn family, I should like very much to be more circumspect in this wise, in presenting, to the reader, so frightful and so lurid a state of affairs at the very outset; I should like, too, to shield the Zinns and the Kidde­masters from that exposure to the noisome world of talebearers, gossipmongers, well-intentioned fools, and journalists of every ilk, soon to plague them, in the midst of their grief. Yet there is no remedy: for A Bloodsmoor Romance: A True History of the Zinns of the Bloodsmoor Valley, must begin on this ignominous day, with the unlook’d-to disappearance of the youngest Miss Zinn, in plain view, I am bound to say, of her terrified sisters.

  That the dark-haired and very pale-skinned Deirdre was to be borne away from her loving parents, and her devoted sisters, at the maidenly age of but sixteen, is surely tragic; that she was to be borne away, in such unwonted circumstances, in an outlaw balloon of sinister black-silken hue, manned by an unidentified pilot, is so singular and so unprecedented in the annals of the Valley, or elsewhere, that one cannot entirely condemn the gossipmongers for their cruel whisperings. An innocent child, indeed—for what child, of good family, is not innocent?—yet, withal, was there not something strange about this youngest Miss Zinn; something willful, and truculent, and brooding, and indelicate? Was she grateful to have been adopted by so illustrious a family? Was she devout enough a Christian? Was she not rather furtive in her manner, and stubborn in the melancholy of her visage; and, tho’ a member of the Zinn family for some six years, a daughter, and a sister, much cherished b
y all, was she not curiously faithless?

  Thus, the gossipmongers: their ignorant prattle, I am happy to say, rarely found its way back to the family itself, so sparing them additional grief.

  Ah, Deirdre, how many misfortunes are to follow from your initial misfortune! How many tears must be spilt, and hearts rent; unseemly passions inflamed; precipitant outbursts unleash’d, to work their evil amongst the faultless! And all as a consequence of a willful young lady’s decision to absent herself from the company of her sisters, in something approaching a disheveled state of mind, with no thought, and no concern, for the feelings of others!

  Indeed, I am bound to confess, here at the outset of my chronicle, that a darksome wave of revulsion oft o’ercomes me, at the consideration of all that must be endured, in future years, by the Zinns, and the elder Kidde­masters as well, as a consequence of this unfortunate episode—springing, as it were, out of the incorporeal air of Bloodsmoor: the warm, luxuriant, dreamy, and golden-hazy air of an autumn day shading to dusk, not long past teatime.

  (IT WILL NOT be objected, I hope, that, at this juncture, I hasten to inform the reader that, though the Zinns are to suffer much tumultuous misfortune, and oft despair at the riddlesome nature of our life here on earth, there are myriad blessings—nay, triumphs—in wait for them: for it is a self-evident truth, as the much-loved poet, essayist, and distinguished man of the cloth, the Reverend Cornelius Potter, has declared: Through the dismal face of Adversity, the sun of Our Lord’s Benevolence ne’er ceases to shine. Nor has God forgotten His especial children, in even this most dismaying of periods in the history of our glorious nation.)

  THE MYSTERIOUS ABDUCTION was perpetrated not by night, not even in the sombre-tentacl’d shadows of first dusk, but by daylight, and not many hundreds of yards from the white-column’d splendor of Kidde­master Hall. The young lady, it seems, wandered off alone, down the pleasingly gentle and picturesque slope of the grassy lawn, to the river below, quitting the company of her four elder sisters, who were sitting in a graceful little gazebo, a short distance from the rear of the great house. (Perhaps you know the Bloodsmoor River, and are familiar with its wide, placid waters, and the eurythmical grace of its motion, as it snakes its way, with no undue haste, through southeastern Pennsylvania: that scenic, that noble river, rivaling the mighty Hudson in its lissome grandeur and in the craggy heights of its granite promontories!—peaceable now, and, indeed, a solace to the wearied eye, though, not many decades previous, the great river suffered much bloodshed on its banks in the tragic War Between the States—Gettysburg being close by; and in numerous earlier skirmishes, harking back to the 1770’s and ’80’s, and, beyond, to divers Tory atrocities, and mutinies amidst the common soldiery, and, in the 1650’s, to the cruelties of the greedy Dutch against the Scandinavian pioneers who had made some small valiant effort to settle our Valley.)

  Tho’ there was to be disclosed, afterward, that Deirdre Louisa’s willful absenting of herself from her sisters’ company may have been partly the result of some trifling, girlish discord amongst them, and tho’ even the most censorious heart cannot fail to feel pity for the child’s fate, nonetheless it should be recorded that Deirdre’s behavior on this autumn day, subsequent to a luxuriant high tea at the Hall, was characteristically perverse and exhibited that frequent want of gentility, and ladylike decorum, that had long stimulated compassionate dismay in the Zinn and Kidde­master families, and in certain of their kinfolk. “Prudence and John Quincy have perhaps o’erextended their Christian charity in so wantonly adopting an orphan of doubtful blood,” Great-Aunt Edwina Kidde­master oft observed over the years; for, as one of the elder matrons of the great family, and one whose alarm’d concern with the decline of morals and etiquette in the nation, subsequent to the War Between the States, did not stint from a courageous examination of her own family, she felt the need to speak frankly, no matter whose feathers (as she curtly expressed it) were ruffled. Other members of the family were less harsh, wishing to cast no blame on Mr. and Mrs. Zinn for the improvidence of the adoption, tho’ they whispered of Deirdre that she “went her own way,” or declared herself, by her habitual scowling melancholy, “a sadly troubl’d young lady”—perhaps even “haunted,” by they knew not what!

  Beauty being a dutiful concern of all the ladies, both of the intrinsic sort and the cultivated, it was generally believed—indeed, all the judgments were in, from family members, and from society itself—that, apart from poor Samantha, Deirdre was the most ill-featur’d of the Zinn girls: Samantha’s lack of beauty being primarily one of puzzling plainness, whilst Deirdre’s had much to do with her pale, leaden, lugubrious countenance, and the sinister recalcitrance with which her brightly-dark eyes beheld the world. “The child is no beauty,” Grandmother Sarah Kidde­master observed, with a delicate shudder, “yet I somehow fancy that she possesses beauty in secret, and is too grudging, or too shy, to reveal it to us.” (A most peculiar notion, issuing from that sensible lady!)

  Albeit that young Deirdre was, in legal nomenclature, and in all official records, adopted, it must not be thought that she was ever considered by her family to be but an outsider; nor was she made to feel different from the other girls save, perhaps, in certain rare and negligible episodes of impatience, on the part of one or two of her sisters. (In this wise, it should be recorded that the sisters felt themselves so frequently rebuffed in their efforts to befriend Deirdre that they naturally grew resentful, and, at times, somewhat irascible.) Indeed, it was a common observation, both throughout the Bloodsmoor Valley, and in Philadelphia, amongst families conversant with the situation, that Prudence and John Quincy Zinn clearly cherished their adopted daughter, as if she were of their own blood.

  That the Zinns acted out of selfless Christian compassion in bringing this deprived child, at the age of nine or ten, into their harmonious household, the reader is free to infer, with no demurral from me; that they acted—alas, how innocently!—with some small measure of imprudence, the reader is invited to judge for himself.

  Yet, I cannot help but think that, like Mr. Ralph Waldo Emerson, that great New England gentleman of Mr. Zinn’s acquaintance, both Prudence and John Quincy would have rejected, with proud vehemence, any thought of behavior of an uncharitable, or small-spirit’d, nature. For did not Mr. Zinn, earlier in his life, oft recite, with benign smiling countenance, these instructive lines of Mr. Emerson’s?

  Tho’ love repine, and reason chafe,

  There came a voice without reply—

  “ ’Tis man’s perdition to be safe,

  When for the truth he ought to die.”

  IF YOU HAVE never glimpsed Kidde­master Hall in its noble site above the Bloodsmoor River, some fifty miles to the east of its junction with the Christiana, I will swiftly limn it for you.

  This historic house, widely acclaimed as one of the most majestic, yet most tasteful, examples in the region of that style known as Philadelphia Greek Revival, possessed, at the time of our chronicle, a grace, beauty, and wholesome elegance, rivaling that of Monticello; and far more harmonious, in its natural bucolic surroundings, than Rumford Hall, some miles distant, or the Ormonds’ ostentatious Mt. Espérance but a few hours’ drive away, or, indeed, the manor house of the family of Du Pont de Nemours, on the Brandywine.

  The house glimmered white, on even the most gloomy of December days, possessing ten serene columns in the Doric style supporting an immense triangular portico; eight high, stately, perfectly proportion’d windows faced front; there was a graceful tho’ large dome, in the shape of a pentagon; there were gently banked roofs, covered in slate; and numerous handsome chimneys; and serpentine walls; and countless minor ornamental touches of a restrained nature. (Indeed, Kidde­master Hall exemplified, throughout, that classical dignity, and quiet opulence, mawkishly but vainly imitated in the pretentious baronial palaces and “English” mansions erected in the Seventies by war profiteers, and that contemptible new breed, the “government contractor”—and even by the wealthier
of those gentlemen who, tho’ calling themselves retailers, were but common shopkeepers; a race of indefatigable vulgarians, and opportunists, who could not have traced their American blood past the turn of the century!)

  Tho’, on its twenty-five hundred acres of land, Kidde­master Hall possessed a charmingly rural aspect, it was yet no more than a few hours’ drive by carriage from Philadelphia; and even closer to Wilmington, Delaware, across the Bloodsmoor River. From these cities, and from divers parts of the countryside, the guests of the Kidde­masters had journeyed, upon that portentous day with which our history begins: the occasion being a formal high tea, in honor of the engagement of the eldest Zinn daughter, Constance Philippa, to the Baron Adolf von Mainz, of Germany, and more recently of Philadelphia; and, in addition, to quietly honor the presence of three distinguished gentlemen, from the American Philosophical Society, who had journeyed down from Boston to make the acquaintance of John Quincy Zinn. (Mr. Zinn, I should explain, had, by 1879, acquired a considerable reputation as an inventor, and thinker, of rare originality; though his real fame lies in the future when the Congress of the United States, and President McKinley himself, took an especial interest in his career, and had much to do with bestowing upon him numerous grants and honoraria to aid in his research. On the day of his youngest daughter’s abduction, Mr. Zinn was but fifty-two years old, and had labored at his oft-thankless vocation of invention since early boyhood.)

  Ah, might that unfortunate day have been averted!—might Deirdre have been ill, or somehow indisposed, that her mother would have commanded her to remain at home abed!—and so much grief would have been prevented. But, alas, nothing of the kind transpired; and though Deirdre oft cast a sickly, peevish, and, as it were, green-hued countenance upon the world, she was as healthsome as any of her sisters, not excluding the overly robust Constance Philippa, who frequently dismayed the elder ladies with her declared pleasure in walking—not in the company of her fiancé, nor even in the company of her sisters, but alone.