A Bloodsmoor Romance (76 page)

“Are we not the most fortunate creatures on God's earth?” Octavia gleefully whispered, as, hugging her precious baby to her bosom, she plumply stooped, that she might kiss the rosy cheek of Little Godfrey as well, and receive his morning kiss. “Are we not happy? Are we not blessèd? I pray only, my dears, that we deserve this bounty—and that our very felicity will not tempt Satan!”

 

AS I HAVE
said, Little Godfrey was devoted to his baby sister, and made constant appeals to Octavia, and to the nursemaid, that he might hold Baby Sarah in his arms (which he was rarely allowed, being somewhat clumsy despite his surprising strength, for a child of three years); or push her in the heavy beribboned perambulator that had once been his own (which he was frequently allowed, tho' his excitement was such that he sometimes pushed the vehicle too fast, and caused Baby to scream); or feed her those favorite foods, that the kitchen staff, in shameless doting upon him, could not resist providing—tarts, trifles, puddings, and such (which of course he was not allowed, these foods being inappropriate for a nine-month-old infant). When Baby Sarah cried, Little Godfrey alternated between an anxiety—most touching to behold!—that she was “unhappy for some reason, I know not,” and a stern disapproval, in that she was making Octavia upset: “For it is very, very naughty,” the golden-haired child claimed, “for anyone to worry Momma—
I do not like it.
” Whereupon Octavia, even as she soothed the squalling infant, made every effort to comfort her diminutive protector, explaining to him that Baby Sarah did not
mean
to upset with her cries—but was simply behaving as a baby must, and as
he
had done, some years before.

It was sheer delight, to see the precocious lad rear back, as if insulted, and exclaim: “No, my dear Momma, you are mistaken—you are
very
mistaken—Godfrey did not ever carry on thusly, he did not
ever
wail and kick and stir up a fuss, and release a shameful odor—I insist, Momma, that
he did not.
”

“Was there ever such a boy!” Octavia said laughingly, to the attendant nursemaid, who, being somewhat new to Rumford Hall, and unaccustomed to Little Godfrey's strong-volumed voice, did not yet feel entirely comfortable in his presence. (The young woman had not, for instance, known how to accept Little Godfrey's immediate gift to her, of a lovely orange-and-black butterfly with slow pulsing wings, pinned to a strip of satin cloth.)

Little Godfrey's love for his sister being great as it was, I can imagine no worse catastrophe, than that, Baby Sarah ceasing to breathe as she did, of a sudden, in her crib, it was Little Godfrey who first gazed upon her—but who, fortunately, being a mere babe himself, had no notion of the horror that had transpired. The sequence of events was confused, and, of necessity, poor Octavia could never piece it together satisfactorily, but it unfolded something like this: Baby Sarah had been placed in the nursery, in her crib, for her midmorning nap; the nursemaid had retired to her own chamber, on a private mission, meaning to be out of the room a scant five minutes; Little Godfrey had entered the room, to see if Baby Sarah was awake yet, and desirous of a stroll in the perambulator; Octavia was giving instructions to the housekeeper, at the rear of the house, yet, by way of the backstairs, not so very far distant from the nursery—and, suddenly overcome by a vertiginous sense of horror, as of suffocation, she broke away from her conversation, and hurried upstairs, as quickly as her petticoats and crinoline and affrighted heart would allow—only to rush into the nursery too late, for Baby Sarah had already ceased breathing, and lay in her wicker crib as peaceful, and as angelic, as if she were merely sleeping, her brother Little Godfrey in attendance close by, fixing his mother with wide blue luminous eyes, and querying, in his exuberant voice: “Will Baby awake soon? Will she want to be pushed in her perambulator?—for
I
am ready, Momma, at any time.”

Octavia leaned over the crib, and snatched her baby in her arms, but, alas!—it was too late.
The dimpled babe had passed from this earthly realm forever.

 

PRECISELY WHAT TRANSPIRED
next, Octavia retained but scant knowledge: she clutched her warm yet unbreathing infant to her bosom, and would have swooned straightaway, and sunk heavily to the floor, had not Little Godfrey strode manfully forward, crying, “Momma! Dear Momma! What is it, Momma!”—and acted to assist her to a chair. It would wring the most calcified of hearts, to witness this child's grave concern for his mother, so tragically contraposed with his utter ignorance of the catastrophe at hand!

With Baby Sarah's elfin corpse in her arms, poor Octavia did indeed sink into a swoon, for the shock was o'ermuch: and it is God's great mercy to us, in our hour of most unbearable grief, that He grant us a semblance of oblivion, and weigh our eyelids against that very
daylight world,
that, in all well-intentioned innocennce, I had praised, but a moment before. In short, the o'erwhelmed mother
fainted:
but not before she heard her little boy ask anxiously, “Is Baby being naughty again, Momma? Is she worrying you? Momma? Momma?
I
am at your service, Momma, you know—pray, do not despair!”

VIII

The Mark of the Beast

FIFTY-FIVE

I
t is scarcely to be believed, by those of us who know her so intimately, that, as her public career advanced, and her talent matured (for, I suspect, her myriad admirers could not be totally mistaken, as to her possessing a modicum of that vulgar commodity “talent”), the infamous Malvinia Morloch became increasingly doubtful: that, upon a hundred occasions, in the late Eighties, and the early Nineties, when her celebrity was at its meretricious height, the flamboyant actress was oft seized by not only a sense of her having done something wicked, but of her
being
wicked: an accursèd mechanism, devoid of Spirit, and “natural” in naught but the most egregiously bestial of ways!

I shall not succumb,
Malvinia Morloch instructed herself, with bitter deliberation, pouring wine, or, it may be, a yet stronger liquid, from a decanter into a glass, gripped in a shaking hand,
I shall not this time succumb,
she vowed, scarce daring to confront the cold-glazed blue eyes in the mirror (whether a mirror in a hotel suite in New York City, or San Francisco, or Chicago, or St. Louis, or New Orleans, or Boston: ah, wherever!),
I shall not succumb, or, I swear, I must do away with myself
.
.
.
!

And she quaffed the powerful beverage, the like of which no lady would desire, let alone deign to imbibe, and, all atremble, waited in vain for a narcotizing effect to transpire: yet, such was her spiritual condition, and so accustomed by this time was her frail physique, to alcohol of any degree of potency, that no glow of confidence ensued, or faint blossoming of strength. And so the wretched woman shivered, and half sobbed, in a realization that her depressed mood was but the more depressed by this shameful indulgence—of which, I hardly need confide, I can bring myself to speak only with great effort.

An accursèd mechanism,
she named herself, and knew herself, indeed; and from the inside. Without a soul, whether graced by God, or merely mortal: without the softer, gentler, feminine impulses, by which in all civilized Christian societies decency is judged. By the most ironic of coincidences, the gentleman who was now pressing himself upon her, with little attentions, and gifts, of a cynically costly nature, appeared to be of like mind, tho' Malvinia, in her coquettish despair, had never hinted of her dread self-assessment. This gentleman, whom the reader will know as Mark Twain, was doubtless a perfect mate for Malvinia Morloch, tho' she made her usual show of resistance: for even as he excoriated the money-maddened society of his day, he boasted to all who would hear of his own wealth, and his own schemes for yet more wealth; mouthing a disdain for the public's high regard of his “genius,” the captious man of letters nonetheless strutted along Fifth Avenue every Sunday afternoon, or descended the sprawling staircases of the most elegant hotel foyers, proudly attired in full-dress, white tie, white silk waistcoat, and all, that his giddy admirers—most of them, I am sorry to say, of the weaker sex—might flock about him, clucking and lunging like barnyard fowl.
An accursèd mechanism,
Malvinia secretly adjudged herself, the while she made up her face as heavily as she dared, to be viewed in the cruelty of daylight (for our capricious young lady was no longer twenty years of age, but, as this segment of our history begins, a rather more sobering thirty-three),
a machine of beastly inclination,
she inwardly muttered, as, adorning her body with ever more costly and flamboyant articles of clothing, poor Malvinia thrust herself upon the “stage” of her own life, with a play of zestful appetite her fickle attentions belied—and was deeply shaken, despite her show of outward coquetry, by Mr. Mark Twain's proudly voiced negativism, which so queerly and coincidentally matched her own.

“What is Man?” the aging, but still handsome, gentleman rhetorically inquired, sprawled in a booth at Delmonico's, or at his specially reserved table at Sherry's. “What are
we,
my dear Miss Morloch, but machines? No, no, pray do not turn so startl'd and innocent a visage upon me, my dear, but only consider: machines moved, directed, and commanded by
exterior
influences,
solely
—or, if animal-like, exactly along the ignoble lines of the chameleon, who takes his color, in order that he may survive, from his place of resort.”

Whereupon the beauteous Miss Morloch, not many minutes from a triumphant, but exhausting, performance at the Broadway, in the leading role of a negligible concoction entitled
The Lost Heiress,
saw fit to respond not with the shocked sympathy she felt, but with an arch, and prettily disapproving, query to Mr. Twain: “But, my dear sir, you must exempt me, for, as you can see,” and here she made a childish gesture, and turned upon him a dazzling and inspired smile, “as you can see, I am
hardly
at one with my setting, and would not, in the crude state of affairs of which you so gleefully speak, survive for an hour!”—dressed as she was, the vain creature meant, in an evening gown of indecent décolletage, made of a glimmering, clinging, iridescent Oriental fabric, bright crimson, upon which jewels and pearls weighed heavily; and slender-bodied ermines, three in number, grasped one another's tails firmly in their small clenched teeth, their extraordinary beauty in the rank service of keeping warm her near-naked shoulders. “I should, you know, be picked out at once by any hunter: and must then depend solely upon the mercy of kind-hearted gentlemen like yourself, that you will not pursue me for my hide.”

The mustached man of letters could not resist an admiring smile, at his would-be mistress's wit, however artificial it might strike the ear, and however coldly glinting her blue eye might strike another eye: nor could he, in all good sport, refrain from acknowledging a kindred
soul,
or a kindred
soullessness,
as remarkable as his own. And, laying a chunky, beringed hand upon Malvinia's bare forearm, above her silken white glove, he chuckled deep in his throat, and intoned, in a voice just loud enough so that rapt eavesdropping admirers at the next table might hear, and cherish forever in their memories (ah! to have stolen away with a
bon mot
fallen from the sacred lips of Mark Twain!): “My dear Miss Morloch, it quite astonishes me, that a young lady of your wisdom, and your notable experience, should prove so naïve: for yours truly has rarely been mistaken as
kindhearted,
still less as a
gentleman:
and I hope you will soon allow me the privilege, of disabusing you of that notion.”

 

AND WHAT HAD
become of Orlando Vandenhoffen? the startl'd reader may well ask; what had become of that great impassioned love, for which, at one time, the distraught Malvinia had threatened to “do away with herself”?

Gone. Lost. And, yes—forgotten.

Whether cast aside by Malvinia, in one of her insane fits of jealousy (which occurred with increasing frequency, in the mid-Eighties); or contemptuously free of her by his own volition, and reconciled with his long-suffering wife and family, in Italy: I am not altogether certain. That Vandenhoffen had disappeared utterly from Malvinia Morloch's life, however, by 1892, I am quite certain; for, in fact, his place in her affections had been filled many times over, by a shameful diversity of gentlemen, of varying degrees of charm, wealth, and social position.

Impossible! you exclaim. Had Malvinia not vowed to love Vandenhoffen forever, and to die at once, if their sentimental union were dissolved? Had she not wept, and thrown herself about, and threatened to rake her beautiful cheeks with her nails, if he but glanced upon another woman, or alluded to another woman in his speech?

Was it not the matinee idol Orlando Vandenhoffen of whom Constance Philippa's most beautiful bridesmaid had sung, in secret, so many years ago, at that fateful wedding celebration in Bloodsmoor?—mouthing the merry words like any other participant, in all ostensible maidenly innocence—

It's we two, it's we two for aye,

All the world and we two, and Heaven be our stay!

Like a laverock in the lift, sing O bonny bride!

All the world was Adam once, with Eve by his side!

All the world was Adam once—with Eve by his side!

whilst, imprinted upon her lustful heart, the image of
Orlando Vandenhoffen
surreptitiously smoldered!

And had the faithless daughter not cruelly bragged, in her hastily scribbled farewell to her loving parents, that she was happy for the first time in her life, under this cad's protection: not minding, for a moment, how the wicked boast should strike their ears? And had she not believed Vandenhoffen to be more than a mere man, but her
Destiny?