A Bloodsmoor Romance (102 page)

Mr. Ormond, made known of his wife's discovery, surprised all the staff by his
fury.
So far was he from repenting, and begging Mrs. Ormond's forgiveness, that he strode violently into the bedchamber, and slammed the door behind him, and locked it, there to confront his wife, in her pallid and weakened condition—the precise words of their dialogue naturally being not known, even to the most inquisitive of servants.

Whereupon there followed many weeks, and months, of turbulence: for, once recovered, Mrs. Ormond would not allow the matter to rest, but oft returned to it, to confront her wayward husband, against all the dictates of prudence. (For Delphine Ormond, née Martineau, remained a
most
spirited woman: at one time a near-match for the lively Malvinia, in wit, and gaiety, and beauteousness of countenance: nor was her intrinsic intelligence dull'd, by numerous pregnancies, miscarriages, births, and female maladies, of a commonplace nature; or by upward of a decade as Mrs. Justin Ormond.) She made her tearful accusations—she ordered the servants to pack her clothes, and those of her children—she threatened “public disgrace,” and even, in her recklessness, “legal intervention”: whereupon the florid-faced Mr. Ormond naturally opposed her, and shouted at her, and laid hands upon her, until, in one most unfortunate episode—
Mrs. Ormond physically fighting back, with fists and nails
—he rendered her unconscious with a blow!—and afterward carried her bodily to the master bedchamber, snarling at the terrified servants, that they should be gone, and forget about the matter entirely, for it was but a trivial episode.

Some days passed, during which Delphine Ormond did not stir from her bed: only one servant being allowed admittance, to bring her food. Dr. Popock was summoned by Mr. Ormond, to prescribe proper medicines, that Mrs. Ormond might be calmed, and her hysteria dealt with; and it was most unfortunate, that the imprudent wife should seize this opportunity, to recommence her accusations, and threats, and scornful weeping, so that the startl'd Dr. Popock was forced to deal with this agitation. (And I cannot think it to have been a pretty sight: a wife and mother in her early thirties, no longer a naïve bride, ranting against her husband to a third party, and displaying such vehemence, and unsanctioned knowledge, as to make one wonder at her breeding.)

In time, a sickroom was established, in the largest of the turrets of the mansion, and the invalid forcibly brought to it, by Mr. Ormond, Dr. Popock, and two of the more muscular menservants: this chamber declared to be ideal, from the standpoint of salubrity, in that it was freely ventilated, with fresh breezes from the countryside; and its distance from the rest of the house beneficial as well, as Mr. Ormond aptly noted. (For, despite certain failings, of temperament rather than of character, Mr. Ormond was a devoted father to his son and daughter: and trembled to think that, as a consequence of the “madwoman's” ravings, they might form distorted views, of either their sick mother, or himself.)

“And she has been imprisoned, like that, for years?” Philippe Fox exclaimed. “For
years,
Delphine Martineau has been kept under lock and key, and no one has protested, and no one has thought to come to her aid?” Thus the o'erwrought man queried, his eyes dilated, and his voice rising to an unnatural pitch.

The bribed servant did not know how to respond, save to offer, feebly, the explanation that the Martineau family, having suffered other disappointments in recent years, including grave financial losses of an undetermined sort, had not the energy, or the will, or the interest, to intervene; and that the Reverend Hewett, who visited the invalid at least once a fortnight, and dined with Mr. Ormond, did not offer any strong opinion, as to whether the mistress of Mt. Espérance was being
forcibly
detained, or
therapeutically.

“By God, then—by God,
I
shall act!” Philippe Fox declared, bringing a small but manly fist down, on a tabletop, with such passion that the servant flinched in alarm. “
I
shall act—
I
shall rescue her—and
you
shall help me—and it will be accomplished—it
will
be consummated—I swear, before another week transpires!”

(Tho' in his braggart's impetuosity, Mr. Fox was wildly mistaken, about the
length of time
the abduction would take, he was correct in other particulars; and must be granted some small respect, for the alacrity with which he formed his plan.)

 

THE LAST GLIMPSE
we were afforded of Constance Philippa Zinn, that desperate young woman was, in fact, the bride of Baron von Mainz: tho' she was never to be his—or any man's—
wife.

Heavily veiled, clad in dark-hued clothes of such unfashionable shapelessness they might have belonged to an elderly woman, or to a nun, Constance Philippa departed from the Hotel de la Paix as stealthily as possible, by night; and, in the morn, might have been observed in one of the small private compartments of the Baltimore & Ohio, headed out of Philadelphia, bound for the West.

She had purchased a ticket for Cleveland, scarce knowing what she did, or even where, precisely, Cleveland was: being so distraught at the time, and so terrified that the Baron might pursue her, that she behaved in a most eccentric manner, not wishing to meet anyone's eye. It is important, I suppose, for us to recall that, in 1880, Constance Philippa had never ventured out of Bloodsmoor
by herself
—it was rare even that she was allowed a solitary walk, in the benign woods and meadows belonging to the Kidde­masters!

Thus, her criminal recklessness, to board a train unescorted, and to plunge into she knew not what!—adventure, or folly, or catastrophe, or serendipitous circumstance. It did not seem to her altogether real, that she was
alone
in a private compartment, on a train hurtling noisily westward: she half fancied, with a lifting heart, that, when she turned, she would see her mother; or her kindly smiling father; or Great-Aunt Edwina, fixing her with an earnest, contemplative gaze; or Narcissa Gilpin; or any of her other chaperons.

Her bosom heaved with a tumult of warring emotions: a gloating
joy
at having escaped the Baron, whom she detested; a paralyzing
terror
at the irreparable nature of her act; a childlike
giddiness,
and
befuddlement,
at the prospect of freedom.

“Freedom!”—so her benumbed lips shaped the alien word, which could not have sounded more strangely to her ear, were it an utterance of
Russian,
or
Turkish.
“
Is
this freedom!” she murmured, frightened and exhilarated, as the disorderly suburbs of the city fell back, and away; and the lumbering train, gathering speed the while, moved at last into the hilly countryside, so very like the idyllic landscape of Bloodsmoor, yet so very different: unfixed, vigorous, bold, fluid of motion, to her staring eye.
This,
at last, was freedom: the pastoral wooded hills—the deep-shaded ravines—the sun shining with yolklike splendor in the eastern sky—the noise of the train, yet the privileged secrecy of the compartment—the exuberant anonymity of speed—the o'ercoming of Constance Philippa Zinn!

“I shall never go back,” the reckless young woman spoke, flinging back her veil, and unpinning her heavy hat, that she might toss it down on the seat beside her. “I shall never be
that person
again.”

She then drew forth, from one of her several bags, a pretty miniature case in kidskin, decorated with purple velvet trim, and a scattering of tiny golden roses around an engraving of “The Crystal Palace”: this case being from the workshop of the renowned Mathew B. Brady, and a birthday gift from one of her sisters, not a year before. Inside, on the right, Constance Philippa had inserted a likeness of Deputy U.S. Marshal Wild Bill Hickok, taken from a newspaper (this photograph showing the notorious scoundrel when he was in his early thirties, with hair parted in the center of his broad thug's head, and falling limply to his shoulders: its most striking aspect, apart from the grim-brow'd resoluteness of Hickok's expression, and his stance of virile authority, being the weapons he had thrust conspicuously into his belt—two white-handled pistols, and an unsheathed knife, of that wicked variety known as the “bowie”); on the left, she had inserted a somewhat indistinct daguerreotype of Mr. Zinn, seated in a rigid, yet noble, posture, against a backdrop of dark velvet curtains. His posture was no less manly than that of the blackguard ruffian Hickok, but his strong-boned countenance radiated intelligence, and kindliness, and mental ingenuity; and his gaze bespoke paternal love. Yet such was Constance Philippa's callousness, that, with but a moment's hesitation, she removed Mr. Zinn's likeness from the case!—and hid it beneath the discarded hat.

“I shall not—I shall
never
—” she whispered. “Never in this lifetime!”

She recalled, of a sudden, with vertiginous clarity, jumbled scenes of the previous day: the settled, gratified countenance of Mrs. Zinn, beneath a flower-trimmed hat made especially for the occasion, of her eldest daughter's wedding; the somewhat distracted, but smiling, and wondrously handsome, countenance of Mr. Zinn; Reverend Hewett in his ministerial robes, solemnly intoning the words of the sacred rite; the veil of Brussels lace, and the sprig of fragrant orange blossom in the bridegroom's lapel; the innumerable pink tea roses—ah, so lovely!—strewn with gay generosity, in the dining room at Kidde­master Hall. And the frosted bride's loaf, and Cousin Basil's rollicking song, and Malvinia's proffered bouquet, of wilted tea roses and ugly white weed flowers: “For you, dear Constance Philippa, in celebration of your having been the
first
of the renowned Zinn girls, to surrender your maiden name!”—thus the merry, tho' perhaps o'erwrought, Malvinia, whom Constance Philippa had ached to slap: but, in her new position as the Baroness von Mainz, she had little recourse, but to accept the cruel prank as if 'twere but a jest, and to lay it wordless beside her plate at the table.

Now these images flooded her o'ertaxed brain, and she muttered aloud,
“Never in this lifetime!”
and her palpitating heart so tumultuously responded, she was in terror, for some minutes, that she might suffocate, or faint; and felt the panicked necessity,
tho' in the hurtling public vehicle,
to tear at her tight-buttoned bodice, and at her silken chemise, and, most desperately, at her armorlike corset, that she might loosen it, and forestall collapse.

All this, the while gasping, and whimpering, and murmuring petitions to that Creator, Whom in other respects she affected to scorn, the bold young woman did not stint from accomplishing: until her handsome traveling suit was in shocking disarray, and her white
crêpe de chine
blouse ripped, and her chemise trampled on the floor beneath her feet, and her whalebone corset injur'd—the which had cost her parents a substantial sum, having been ordered specially from London, by way of Madame Blanchet: numerous of the resilient laces broke, and the metal eyelets distended, and upward of a dozen bone stays twisted hideously out of shape.

(This rude act, I am moved to declare, was the true emblem of Constance Philippa's
fall from grace,
even more, perhaps, than her virgin flight from the marital bed—the one being
excusable,
or, at the very least, comprehensible, if viewed with necessary respect for the maiden sensibility; the other being
inexcusable,
adjusted from any sane perspective, of Christian humanity and common decency.)

It had been my impression, that Constance Philippa—or, as she soon baptized her disguis'd self, “Philippe Fox”—journeyed with very little delay, to that rough and unseemly, yet, withal, picturesque, part of our great country, known as the Southwest: but, upon closer inspection, this was not the case. She took the Baltimore & Ohio westward to Cleveland; and, some months later, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, westward to Chicago (now in her costume, as a gentleman: her waistlong hair tightly bound, and hidden beneath her hat); and, an indeterminate period of time later—perhaps as much as a year—the Illinois Central, westward to Kansas City. Should we wish to scrutinize Miss Zinn's odyssey, with the stern and unblushing eye of the moralist, until, at some indeterminate point, on the map of our states, Mr. Fox is born, in physiological veracity, as well as the fever'd fantasy of a renegade Bloodsmoor girl, it would necessitate the deliberate acquisition of far more intimate material than I wish to pursue: yet I believe it is accurate to say that, in turbulent and unlettered Kansas City, in the early Eighties, Mr. Fox was still naught but Miss Zinn, in ingenious disguise.

What class of individuals Mr. Fox chose to mingle with; how, despite his natural delicacy of manner, and slender physical frame, and soft-pitched voice, he managed not only to deceive
gentlemen,
but
men;
how, brashly o'ercoming the genteel upbringing of his childhood and youth, he had set himself the task of learning shopkeeping, and accounting, and rudimentary law, and horseback riding
with the employment of a man's saddle,
and sharpshooting, and stud poker and monte, and, in general, the agile exercise of his wits (where, as Constance Philippa, he had been forced to spend an inordinate amount of time learning, by rote, certain verses of Shakespeare, Milton, and Longfellow; and the intricacies of crocheting, and fancywork of every sort; and which of the four corners of a calling card to turn down; and how to navigate, with seeming artlessness, the great number of glass goblets, wine and champagne glasses, forks, knives, spoons, and majolica plates, with which one would be confronted, at a formal dinner); how he succeeded, in his vainglorious boast, of
o'ercoming Constance Philippa
—I cannot say: I am quite bewilder'd, and simply cannot say: save to observe that Constance Philippa was not only the sole Zinn sister who would have been capable of such a perverse transformation, but the sole female personage, of all of the Bloodsmoor Valley.