A Bloodsmoor Romance (51 page)

These nails should rent that beauty from my cheeks.

GLOU:
These eyes could not endure that beauty's wrack;

You should not blemish it, if I stood by:

As all the world is cheered by the sun,

So I by that; it is my day, my life.

ANNE:
Black night o'ershade thy day, and death thy life!

GLOU:
Curse not thyself, fair creature—thou art both.

ANNE:
I would I were, to be reveng'd on thee.

Upon more than one occasion the saucy Malvinia Morloch, fortified, it may have been, by a half-bottle of French champagne consumed before the performance, so earnestly acquitted herself of the spitting scene that her leading man—muttering a curse beneath his breath, as if he
were
the murderous king, and not his semblance—had to pause in his speechifying, to wipe his face with a handkerchief.

“Would it were mortal poison for thy sake!”
Malvinia cried.

“Never came poison from so sweet a place,”
Vandenhoffen claimed—but not always with the utmost sincerity.

And so they quarreled; and were reconciled; and Malvinia forgave her lover his cruelty, and Vandenhoffen forgave her her ill-temper, and took her in a carriage to the great Thames Department Store on Twenty-eighth Street, where, like a child, she might select as much as she wished, of kidskin gloves, and Japanese fans, and shawls of the finest Highland cashmere, and tortoise-shell combs trimmed in gold, and gold-backed hand mirrors, and French bonbons, and alligator-hide bags. “My favorite place in all the world!” Malvinia said greedily, her blue eyes narrowed and her breath swift and shallow, as, her lover beside her, she rode the palatial elevators, and moved, amidst a throng of shoppers, along the wide aisles of the world's largest store, a very Heaven of costly trinkets. (The Thames was eight floors high, a cast-iron reproduction of a Venetian
palazzo
with narrow columns, spandrels, and small ornate windows, in a design extremely pleasing to the American eye. That P.J. Thames had once been a mere
Yankee pedlar
filled Malvinia with astonishment, for it was quite a miracle, and quite an
American feat,
that the “World's Largest Store” had arisen out of a pedlar's shabby backpack! “Indeed,” Malvinia murmured, turning a Japanese sandalwood fan in her fingers, “my favorite place in all the world. Excepting, of course, our private chamber.”)

 

LIKE ALL COLD-HEARTED
persons, no matter the cherubic nature of their faces, Malvinia Morloch pondered but briefly on the sorrow she had wreaked, in days past: tho' from time to time, when most aggrieved with Orlando Vandenhoffen, or pettishly incensed by some real or imagined slight to herself at the theater, she recalled with a pang of sentiment the Octagonal House, and the cozy bedchamber she had shared with sweet simple Octavia, and the parlor where, in the evening, the family gathered for music, and games, and reading, and the warm childlike pleasures of the hearth.
Sentiment
was felt; but never
remorse
or
guilt.
She brooded nostalgically upon herself as a child (and so pretty a child! all the relatives exclaimed); and Constance Philippa as a gawky-limbèd young girl, so bony at the pelvis that her corset could be turned freely about; and Octavia who had adored her, and petted her, and fussed over her, warming her chilled feet between her hands, or brushing out her hair, after washing, in a protracted, solemn ritual. And there was Samantha, of course, ugly little Samantha, with that head of beautiful hair which Malvinia had oft coveted; and Mrs. Zinn, who had never forgiven her, perhaps, for the excruciatingly painful hours she had had to endure, at Malvinia's birth. (“Alas, dear Mother!—how was
I
at fault?” Malvinia murmured aloud, in the chilly ostentation of her boudoir at the St. Regis, high above the street in which carriages and horsedrawn cabs clattered. “You might more justly have blamed Providence, after all; or Father himself.”)

With many sighs, and a false tear or two in her eye, Malvinia gave herself up to thoughts of Mr. Zinn: not as he was at the present time (for she did not know him, at the present time), but as he had been many years ago, in the nursery, ah, so many, many years ago, when she was his heart's favorite, and performed to his great delight. That Mr. Zinn might have suffered great agony on her account, or might even have wrenched her violently from his affections, the maudlin young woman naturally did not consider: for was she not Father's favorite, the daughter of whom he was most proud?

And then there would sound a timid knock on her door, and it would be her French lady's maid, informing her that a gentleman had come to call; or Mr. Vandenhoffen was awaiting her, in the parlor; or her bath water was drawn, and the warm bubbly suds, liberally spiced with Fleur de lis Oils and Blanc de Neige, in preparation for her: and naturally she would forget all that she had been thinking, for thoughts flew in and out of Malvinia Morloch's head, rarely lingering for long.

“I am so besieged!—so beset-upon!” Malvinia exclaimed to herself, with a gratified little smile.

 

SIGNIFICANT IT IS,
that Malvinia suffered a kind of amnesia, never recalling the buttonlike eyes of little Pip (save in occasional dreams, in which they were fixed most
sternly,
and most
humanly,
upon her); and never recalling the pallid face of her youngest sister Deirdre.

Indeed, she very nearly called attention to herself, by the way in which she scoffed at the “Spiritualist nonsense” so many appeared to believe in: she thought it “ridiculous,” and “a consequence of criminal bribes,” that the well-known journalist Colonel Lynes, writing for the New York
Daily Graphic,
had a moderate word to say for the mediumship of “Deirdre of the Shadows,” after he had exposed so many other popular mediums, in his inimitable jocular style.

Most of the time, however, she resolutely ignored the newspaper stories about this mysterious “Deirdre,” turning the page impatiently, as if fearing contamination; and when Vandenhoffen inquired idly, to a party dining after hours at the Park Lane, “Should we all remove ourselves to a séance downtown, for the sport of it?—since ‘Deirdre of the Shadows' is now operating out of a respectable brownstone on the lower Fifth Avenue, and it
might
be amusing,” Malvinia answered at once, in a jeering voice, before anyone else could reply: “My dear Orlando, the Spiritualists are our
competitors
in the theater: they are but actors and actresses, pretending otherwise.”

And the matter was dropped, to Malvinia's great relief.

 

HOWEVER—IT WAS ON
a rain-lashed night in the final week of
Richard III,
when theatergoers were driven up to the Fanshawe in closed carriages, and gusts of wind made the gaslight flicker lewdly, that something very disturbing occurred, to suggest to our haughty lady that the matter could
not
be so lightly dropped.

The performance on that evening moved forward as always, perhaps with some diminishment of energy, which is only natural after a run of many weeks. But tho' Malvinia made every effort to give her Anne some spirit, it seemed to her—and perhaps to Vandenhoffen as well, who spoke his lines rather leadenly—that something was amiss in the theater: some
odd, chill, discomfiting presence
in the audience. Like any competent actress, Malvinia spurred herself to defeat the mood, pronouncing her lines less mechanically than usual, tho' she was rather disconcerted, feeling a pair of remorseless eyes in the audience, eyes that, refusing to be taken in by the elaborate illusion on stage, saw her clearly.

So she recited her lines, she displayed anger, and loathing, and an almost coquettish resignation, and whilst Vandenhoffen embarked upon one of his longer speeches, his leading lady took the opportunity, rather hesitantly, to run her eyes along the rows of spectators, finding nothing, until she happened to glance up to the box usually reserved for the wealthy Vander Elst family: whereupon she saw a sight that pierced her to the roots of her being, and made her doubt for a moment that she would be able to continue with the farce of Shakespeare, in the light of
genuine malevolence.

For there was no mistaking it: the chill, leaden, paralyzing presence she had sensed, from the very opening of her scene, could be attributed to two personages seated in the front row of the box.

One was a woman of flaccid middle age, who peered at her through a lorgnette, in an attitude of affected refinement, ludicrously at odds with her squat, dumpy figure, and her corpulent face: this woman, attired in a
grande toilette
silk dress with a multitude of ribbons, and an ostrich-plume hat of a jaunty shape and size, with innumerable chains and beads looped about her neck, gazed at Malvinia with more than moderate interest, yet, withal, a not entirely unsympathetic mien.

It was the other person—heavily veiled, small of stature, immobile as a statue—who was staring so intently at Malvinia, and from whom, so the frightened actress imagined, the
odd, chill, remorseless
atmosphere emanated.

Had this evil presence declared itself many months before, at the start of Malvinia Morloch's career; had it—God forbid!—manifested itself on the very night of her
début,
the ascent of Malvinia Morloch to the stellar heights of celebrity would have been hideously crippled: nay, it might have been crushed altogether. But so practical-minded had Malvinia become, as a working actress, and, it may be, so skillful that the ominous presence of the veiled stranger did not incapacitate her, despite her initial trepidation.
I must finish out this scene,
Malvinia thought, in a panic.
I cannot let her o'ercome me.

And so she continued with Anne's lines, speaking animatedly, so in control of her facial expression, and her rehearsed stage mannerisms, that she was able to disguise the agitation she felt. She experienced a curious numbed detachment, as if she were simultaneously
Lady Anne,
and the actress
Malvinia Morloch,
and
Malvinia
who stood apart from both, no matter that her breath came swift, and her heart hammered, and, involuntarily, her gaze swung up to the veiled lady in the Vander Elst box, with whom she fancied she exchanged a hard, frank stare, despite the stranger's black veil.

And then—God be thanked!—her exchange with Richard was over; and she could escape the stage, all breathless, and close to swooning.

 

SO DEIRDRE HAS
come to claim me,
she thought, in her dressing room, as her hair was being adjusted, and some trifling bouquets of roses were being vased,
but am I hers to “claim”?

Her premonition was mistaken, in any case. After the first act, the Vander Elst box was empty. And the chill, uncanny presence—the atmosphere of
unearthly menace
—had vanished.

 

“HATEFUL CREATURE!
—AH, HATEFUL!
”
Malvinia stormed, in private, striking her fists together. “I do not know her—she is no sister of mine—we have no blood in common—it is intolerable, that she should intrude into my life!”

She told Vandenhoffen nothing of what had transpired, for she dreaded his surprise, and his curiosity, and his inevitable interrogation. And surely he would want to be introduced to Deirdre, surely he would demand that Malvinia arrange for a meeting. . . .

So she did not tell her lover of the agitation that gnawed at her heart, or the image of that slight, veiled, sinister figure, which haunted her for many days and nights. “Hateful—hateful!” she murmured. “Ah, it is intolerable! I will not countenance it!”

Nor did she tell him of an astonishing incident that happened only a few days later, on the very last night of the play: an incident more perplexing, it may be, than the first.

On this final night, the curtain having fallen for the last time, and the cast much relieved, Malvinia made her way to her dressing room, expertly undoing her tresses, when a stranger—a comely young gentleman—all but accosted her, to hand her a bouquet of flowers. “My dear Miss Morloch,” he said, in a cool, cultivated voice, eying her with obvious satisfaction, and not a little irony, “you have been a superb Lady Anne: a role lacking in substance, but withal quite poignant. May I congratulate you? And will you accept this small tribute?”

It was rare that any admirer, even so well dressed, and so clearly cultured an admirer, could force his way backstage; unless of course he was known to the manager or the troupe, or had some special function. This handsome young gentleman was a total stranger: Malvinia accepted the bouquet blindly, in some confusion, and was about to inquire of the young man who he was, and how he came to be backstage, when he bowed shortly, and murmured a farewell, and hurried away.

“Wait,” Malvinia cried, “sir—please—”

She stared after him. He was a stranger: and yet he had looked familiar. And his voice, tho' a stranger's voice, was familiar too.

An attractive young man, in his mid-twenties, perhaps; no older. With thick wavy dark hair, neatly parted on the left; and thick, severely defined brows; a strong chin; beautifully chiseled, and rather soft lips; a graceful figure; an air of—how to express it?—subtlety, humor, charm, irony—
knowingness.
He was elegantly attired in a tailcoat, trousers, and waistcoat (the waistcoat being of claret velvet, with gold tissue woven into an agreeable, and not overly busy, pattern); he must have been carrying his top hat, and his gloves. So quickly did he thrust the bouquet at Malvinia, so rapidly was the transaction finished, she felt quite dismayed—and rather cheated. Ah, she should have liked to detain the mysterious young man for a few minutes, to question him, and to become acquainted . . . !