A Bloodsmoor Romance (106 page)

Most surprising of all, in his family's eyes, and, I am bound to say, in my own, was his irritable rejection of membership to the
American Philosophical Society!
—those gentlemen having thought, in their ignorance, that this long-delayed honor would be eagerly seized, by the Bloodsmoor genius. Mr. Zinn's relatives, not excluding his daughters, had supposed that the announcement of his election, at long last, would cheer him, in the midst of his preoccupations: but, quite the contrary, he had deemed the news, in his own words,
contemptible!
—and would not have had the elementary courtesy, to trouble to reply to the telegram, had not the new mistress of Kidde­master Hall, conscious of the obligations rank and station confer, insisted. “I am deeply saddened, Father, that you take this pleasant news so indifferently,” Deirdre said, daring to lightly chide the old man, who had torn the offending yellow paper in two, “but I must beg you, to at least allow
me,
to decline the honor as courteously as possible.”

Whereupon Mr. Zinn paused, and, his skeletal face for a moment illuminated with a rare smile, said: “Ask them—demand of them—the fools!—ask them how they fancy,
they have the right,
to confer honors upon
me
!”

“Why, Father,” Deirdre exclaimed, in genuine surprise, “you must know, the gentlemen mean only well—they mean only to please. If they have been somewhat tardy in their action, if, being but human, they have not until now adequately grasped the magnitude of your genius—”

“If, if! If, indeed!” Mr. Zinn laughed softly. “My dear daughter, I know not
if,
and have no interest in
if
—not my own, and certainly not another's.”

So, her cheeks blushing, Deirdre left the bedchamber, to compose a message for the Society, declining the great honor, with regret—“with infinite regret,” as her telegram read, “as a consequence of my extreme and continued immersion in my work,” and signed it with her father's name.

 

OTHER HONORS WERE
flung at J.Q.Z.—a “permanent” place in the Hall of Distinction, in Washington; an election to the Royal Society, and to the International Association of Scientists and Humanists—but Deirdre was prudent enough, not to trouble her irascible father: for his energies were swiftly waning, and he oft voiced the doubt, that he would be allowed to live long enough, to perfect his
atom-expansion
device.

In a mournful yet dignified voice Mr. Zinn spoke thusly: “I would not be so troubled, Deirdre, if I believed that another inventor, or man of science, might follow, to peruse my scribbled calculations: but, alas, I am obliged to be realistic. I am in my seventy-second year, and have labored in the service of my country, and of humankind, for upward of five decades; as Mr. Emerson solemnly bade us, to live not in ourselves, but in the greater World-Soul, which toils to perfect itself through us. Yet I have no disciple to follow me; nor even an apprentice. And my belovèd wife— But, no: I shall not speak of her, at this time.” And the agèd man sighed, and closed his tear-dimmed eyes, his long thin fingers interlocked in a gesture suggestive of prayer.

“So far as I might help you, Father,” Deirdre said hesitantly, “tho' I am painfully aware of my lack of scientific and mechanical knowledge—”

“Ah, to be so close, so very close!” Mr. Zinn interrupted. “So
very
close, to consummation!—and yet, so far. For it is all the difference between the Hell of our uncompleted labors, and the Heaven of our perfected discoveries—a mere scribbled formula, on a piece of foolscap!”

“I do not think you will fail, Father,” Deirdre said softly. “You must have hope. Our Lord would not have drawn you hither, do you think, only to allow you to fail, so near triumph?”

Mr. Zinn opened his eyes, and blinked, and stared at his soft-featur'd daughter. “You speak of Our Lord? But do you, in truth, believe?”

Deirdre's cheeks heated, and, turning aside, she preoccupied herself, with an ordering of the bottles and vials on the bedside table, that took some minutes. “I believe,” Deirdre murmured, “what it is, that I am obliged to believe.”

“
My
belief,” Mr. Zinn said, in a bemused voice, as he lifted his hands to contemplate—the knuckles so enlarged, the fingers hooked like talons!—“has naught to do with Our Lord, and only to do with myself: and, I fear, it is
myself
that weakens, not the Lord. For could He grasp a pen? Could He calculate a formula? Is it His wish, to detonate the atom, and release its miraculous powers of destruction? I have seen no evidence, my dear!—and, meaning no blasphemy, I do not think that the sovereign government of these United States, in its militant vigil against evil, can have o'ermuch faith in
Him
—or in that benevolent World-Spirit, of which Mr. Emerson so warmly spoke.”

“It is unlike you, Father,” Deirdre said slowly, “to speak in such a way. Indeed, it is
very
unlike you.”

Mr. Zinn turned his pale gaze upon her, and stretched his lips, in a thin forgiving smile. His once-luxuriant hair had sadly thinned; and his once-bountiful beard now consisted of but a few silvery wisps, straggling to his bony chest. The ravaging disease had so greatly aged him, it would not have seemed unlikely, to be told that he was upward of ninety years of age, or nearing one hundred: alas, how tragically alter'd, from that husky young giant, who had strode with such bucolic confidence, in the drawing rooms of fashionable Philadelphia, so very long ago!

Yet the intrinsic wisdom of the
soul
remained, and spoke its own language, from out the dying man's eyes; and the gentle smile remained, forgiving Deirdre her ignorance, or her impertinence. When, at last, Mr. Zinn did deign to speak, it was in a voice subdued by melancholy, and by paternal disapprobation: “
Unlike
me! You fancy that it is
unlike
me! But, my girl, you do not
know
me; and cannot presume to speak.”

 

YET, LACKING A
true disciple, or an apprentice familiar with his work, or, it may be, even a genuine
scion,
born of his own blood, Mr. Zinn in his extremity was forced to summon Deirdre, late on the eve of the New Year, of 1900, and to bid her seek out, for him, certain sheets of foolscap in the cabin; and, you will be pleased to learn, the young heiress obeyed with alacrity, not minding the hour, or the freezing winds that swept up from the river, or the sickly man's importunate manner.

Alone, ah! alone!—thus Deirdre thought herself, with some bemusement, and, I am afraid, some self-pity, as, in the disorder'd workshop, she sought Mr. Zinn's papers with increasing desperation; the while the flame of the kerosene lamp flickered, and her distended shadow leapt and frolicked on the walls, as antic as Pip of old; and she could not prevent herself from shivering most convulsively.

She snatched up one sheet of paper, to examine it, and let it fall; and another; and yet another. It would be, Mr. Zinn had patiently explained, but an ordinary sheet of foolscap, with some nervous doodlings in the margin: simple and childlike representations of suns, and moons, and exploding planets, and perhaps multipetal'd flowers, and molecular structures freely imagined, and he knew not what else!—for his pen was oft playful, even as his brain feverishly worked. “Ah, here!—here it is,” Deirdre murmured aloud, only to examine the paper closer to the flame, and find herself mistaken. “Or here!—but no—no—again I am wrong.”

Even by the uncertain light of a kerosene lamp, the famed cabin bore mute but eloquent witness to the heterogeneity of mind, of its presiding genius: what a miscellany was displayed, of coils of metal, and wire, and glass tubing; and part-completed machines, both small and large; and scatter'd sheets of paper, aswirl on the workbench and floor both, in veritable waves! There was the domestic still J.Q.Z. had invented, but had never troubled to patent, for the desalinating of water; there was the modestly proportioned steam engine, which had not worked for years; there, on all sides, the numerous “automatic” devices J.Q.Z. had tinkered with, in the years before Congress bestowed such grants, and such prestige, upon him—what a welter of springs, knobs, cranks, pipes, chains, weights, and pulleys!

Doubtless Deirdre would have greatly enjoyed perusing her father's laboratory, had she more leisure, and were the circumstances more congenial: but, at the moment, as the minutes pitilessly sped past, and the hours of the old century waned, she continued to shiver despite the warmth of her fur-lined scarlet cloak, and felt the weight, and the great variety, of the
things
surrounding her, to be somewhat disorienting. Alas, that she could not locate the wretched scrap of paper, and bring it triumphantly back!—and betake herself to bed, and to some semblance of tranquillity! But she could not seem to find the desired item, and it struck her as an ironical note, that, as her father's helpmeet, she was at once his
favorite,
now; and, indeed,
the last of the Zinn daughters.

For Malvinia now was married, and living with her much-devoted Mr. Kennicott, a sufficient distance away, in Rhode Island: to which the happy couple had retired, that they might escape the flurried publicity surrounding Mr. Kennicott's fame, as “The Young Longfellow,” and that Malvinia might, all modestly, resume her thespian activities—now on a much reduced and agreeably
amateur
scale, with no pressure put upon her to excel, or to reap commercial gain; and Octavia was so immersed in her duties as mother, and mistress of Rumford Hall (which hallowed interior she was having completely renovated and refurbished, by the most skilled carpenters, artisans, and decorators, in the East), and
wife-to-be,
that, of late, she had but scant time for her ailing father, and, I am distressed to say, but a perfunctory interest, in her old household and its vicissitudes.

And, to no one's regret, Constance Philippa had, now,
quite
disappeared.

As for Samantha, it seems that, of late, she had resumed her activities in the workshop, alongside her belovèd Nahum, and was now dabbling with so divers an assortment of gadgets, mechanisms, and contraptions, I am reluctant to dignify them with the title
inventions.
After an interregnum of some years, this impulsive young woman was in the midst of constructing models for a
baby-mobile
(an apparatus not very different from a
baby-stroller,
albeit that the baby's, or toddler's, feet were free to touch the ground, and a railing encircled the seat, so that the enterprising tot could, if he wished, propel himself by the action of his legs: “In this way,” Samantha argued, “both
self-locomotion
and
self-reliance
will be practiced, in a single gesture”); and a
self-filling pen
(wherein ink came somehow from within the stem, and, by a gravitational urging I cannot pretend to understand, flowed ingeniously to the point, with no need of replenishment, for periods of as long as
six weeks!
); and a
bicycle-umbrella
(this somewhat awkward object being portable, and made of near-translucent rainproofed cloth, to be fitted in place over the rider, to protect him or her from the vicissitudes of the weather). In addition, Samantha was experimenting with a
substitute for glue,
to consist of fine-ground pebbles, pitch, flour, and water; and a
timed kitchen,
wherein an ingenious network of wires, strings, wheels, and pulleys, attached to a clock, would allow the housewife to govern her kitchen by remote control, as it were—for what earthly purpose, I cannot fathom! Her notion of
pulp-paper napkins, bandages,
and
diapers,
to be used but a single time and then freely tossed away, was prized by her husband as an excellent idea indeed: yet he feared, rightfully enough, that no decent womenfolk should wish to be so visibly spendthrift, as to discard that which might be laundered, and ironed, and used again—and again.

Thus, Samantha was once again absorbed in her own life, some distance away in Delaware: and responded but vaguely, to overtures made to her by Deirdre, that she visit Bloodsmoor more frequently.

Alone!—alone of all the Zinn girls!—and, alas, on this night of pitiless howling winds! Yet—am I not grateful at last to be so? the shivering young woman bethought herself, as, to little avail, she continued her search; made increasingly difficult as the minutes passed, and her gloved fingers grew stiff from the cold. For whilst I might delight in the companionship of so cheery a sister as Octavia, or so enterprising a sister as Samantha, I should not, in any case, wish my malevolent spirits back; and I am not prepared—indeed, I am most decidedly
not prepared
—to leap, with unseemly haste, into the condition of
wifehood.

(That Deirdre was beleaguered, even at this crucial moment, by recollections of Dr. Stoughton's earnest countenance, and Hassan Agha's smold'ring black eyes, should not, I think, discredit her, in the reader's stern judgment: for she was, despite the relative maturity of her age, and the elevation of her rank, but a
woman
in her sensibility, to be forgiven romantic excesses, inappropriate otherwise. And tho', at this time, she sensed a certain ineluctable
swaying
of her heart, in the direction of one gentleman, she surely did not, and could not, know, with any certitude—this being a grave decision to be made some months later, well into the spring of 1900; and in that temporal realm into which I have forsworn peering, for purposes of historical and structural symmetry, and in the interests of discretion.)

Thus, it is difficult to determine, whether the accident with the kerosene lamp was a consequence of Deirdre's
distracted thoughts,
or her
stiffened fingers,
or, as she herself adamantly believed,
a sudden intrusion from Spirit World
(the which, alas, she had believed o'ercome, forever!): or whether, in some solemn wise, as I shall not dare to inquire into, it was an
Act of God,
merely employing Deirdre as an instrument. (For I cannot think that Our Heavenly Father was greatly pleas'd, as to the recent surprising statement of J.Q.Z., relative to His, and J.Q.Z.'s, contrasting prowesses, in the making of explosives.)