Free A Bloodsmoor Romance by Joyce Carol Oates

Octavia? Why, are you not teasing?—are you not being cruel? I cannot recall an ‘unlook’d-to’ event in recent memory, in our placid Bloodsmoor!”
    And, to their shame, both Constance Philippa and Samantha joined in her gay careless laughter, the which surely was heard by the weeping Deirdre; and, I am bound to say, by Our Lord Himself.
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    MY PREFERENCE FOR Miss Octavia Theodora Zinn, the most sweetly acquiescent of the sisters, will be, I believe, given further validity, by that comely young lady’s eventual fate, so far as marital experience is concerned: tho’ it is not to be denied that she will suffer, and suffer greatly, before her piety, diligence, generosity of spirit, and intrinsic Christian demeanor are suitably rewarded.
    Octavia was now twenty-one years of age, and had, from perhaps the tender age of ten, been lovingly called “the little lady,” and ofttimes “the little woman,” by both her family and the household staff: as a consequence of the precocity of her figure, and its agreeable plumpness, and her own maturity of manner. (Indeed, Octavia had blossomed so prematurely, in terms of her feminine attributes, that Great-Aunt Edwina, the unrivaled arbiter of such matters within the family, had found it necessary to decree—with not a little alarm, and some natural repugnance—that the child, then but ten years of age, must be fitted at once for a full-figure corset: it being something of a scandal to allow the little girl to appear, even in the nursery, with her flesh unbound and “aquiver,” as Great-Aunt Edwina put it, “in every direction.”) That her manner was unfailingly mature, and wondrously magnanimous, should not have greatly surprised, I am bound to say, seeing that Octavia was, after all, a Kidde­master by blood; yet such were the displays of ill-temper by Constance Philippa, and wanton capriciousness by Malvinia, and, at times, a most unnatural ratiocinative preoccupation, on the part of little Samantha, that the second-eldest bloomed the more admirably, and exhibited all those traits and virtues the world is wont to term gracious, and genteel, and those of a born lady.
    Indeed, as Mrs. Zinn had every reason to modestly pronounce, to her wide circle of female acquaintances, Octavia had oft been called, even as a young girl, “the little mother” as well, in consequence of her loving concern for children younger than herself, and the tremulous intensity of her feeling. She wept as readily over others’ mishaps as over her own; her warm brown eyes were all aglow, when she was allowed into the presence of an infant; she loved to fuss over very small children, kissing and fondling them, and begging to be allowed to hold them. (The innocent little miss quite shocked Mrs. Zinn and several of her lady visitors one afternoon when, in a shy yet firm voice, she announced that she was most eager to acquire an adorable babe of her own, once she was tall enough, and strong enough, to safely carry it!)
    Upon one fearsome occasion, when she was but six years of age, Octavia had managed to save two-year-old Samantha from drowning in the old stone wishing well behind Kidde­master Hall: that precociously inquisitive, and naughty, child having crawled over the rim of the well, to “determine, to her satisfaction, how deep the water might be.” (Though this quaint and rough-hewn well, with its handsome fieldstone, and sturdy oak, was agreeable enough, to the casual eye, its interior was, withal, somewhat sinister: the waters being very deep, and altogether devoid of light, and unhappily odoriferous.) The unreliable Irish girl in charge of the children had, to her shame, fallen asleep, thus allowing the restless Samantha to make her way directly to the well, with that instinct for dangerous mischief that would, with the passage of time, frequently declare itself in the red-haired little miss; and, with no thought