Bellefleur (34 page)

But it was only after several distressing weeks, at dusk of a blustery August day, when, in Little Goldie’s presence, he first began to comprehend the nature of his affliction. Vida and Christabel and Morna and Little Goldie had served him “tea” in the nursery, using miniature cups and saucers, and everyone was sillier than usual because it wasn’t tea they sipped but sweet cream sherry one of the girls had stolen from downstairs (Bellefleur children, throughout the generations, always stole sweet sherries and liqueurs from downstairs, and were rarely caught, even by adults who had done the same thing as children in the same house), when they began to giggle at the pencil drawings on the walls which looked, in Christabel’s reiterated phrase, like horses’ asses. There was Ewan as a little boy! So funny, rolling his eyes upward! And grandfather Noel of all people! And Hiram, hardly more than a baby! Oh, why were their lips so dark, as if they were wearing lipstick, and why did the girls have such grotesque hairdos! And their eyes
shone
like angels’ eyes. The most angelic, the most alarmingly beautiful, of the portraits was that of Garth’s uncle Gideon, who must have been about Little Goldie’s age at the time of the drawing. Christabel giggled and giggled at it, until her cheeks were wet with tears. “Just look at Daddy! Just
look
at Daddy!” she cried. But Little Goldie, suddenly sober, ran to the wall, and stood on her tiptoes to examine the portrait. Garth saw how her expression changed; how raptly she stared up at the striking child inside the ornate gold frame. Little Goldie mumbled something that sounded like, “That’s him, is it,” and Garth’s insides contracted violently with a poison he knew at once—though how could he have known, being so inexperienced?—was jealousy. He gripped the tiny teacup so hard its handle shattered.

The Hound

I
n a full-bodiced white blouse and a long cornflower-blue cotton skirt, wearing her new straw hat with the wide pink velvet ribbon that fell in two streamers down her back, Yolande Bellefleur left the graveled path of the park and, seeing that no one watched, climbed over a split-rail fence with no more than two quick deft movements that hardly showed the white of her petticoats. . . . There was no one to observe the fact that she was slipping off into the forbidden woods north of the cemetery, alone; there was no one to see how becomingly the pink streamers fell against her curly wheat-colored hair. One moment she was on the path, walking without haste: the next moment she had disappeared into the stand of hemlock and mountain maples that bounded the park at this end.

She was fifteen years old and very pretty and she was on her way—ah, no one would have guessed!—though
why
on an ordinary weekday morning would she be wearing so fetching an outfit, and her brand-new (it was hardly a week old) straw hat rather than her old straw hat?—on her way—so she mouthed the words, shivering—to meet her lover. Yolande Bellefleur was on her way to meet her lover.

The woods, the forbidden woods! The forbidden Bellefleur woods!

Sunless and preternaturally silent and yet enchantingly beautiful: or was it simply the peace of the forest that was so beautiful? Those who strolled idly through the woods found themselves saying less and less, for words, in this dark still inhuman place, rang hollow; tasted suddenly meager on the tongue; lost their meaning. Peace, tranquillity, silence, the soft bed of pine needles always underfoot, springy, spongy, seductive, lulling. . . . One lowered his voice in this place, and soon stopped talking altogether. For what value had mere
words,
here?

Still, she shaped her words aloud, though shyly (for the forest had already begun to intimidate her): “Yolande Bellefleur is on her way to meet her lover. . . .”

Nine-thirty in the morning. A fresh clear windless day. She had wakened early, stirred by the memory of Saturday’s prolonged delirium: the Steadman wedding upriver at the Steadman estate, Irma Steadman married at the age of seventeen, Yolande one of eight bridesmaids. . . . Irma Steadman, her friend, standing there beside her bridegroom, in that long full gown with its layers of Spanish lace, and the veil that had been her grandmother’s, her small sweet face radiant (for there was no other word); the young man beside her in his bridegroom’s outfit, with the silk-embroidered buttonholes and the ruffled cuffs and the sprig of orange blossom in his lapel, and the smart gleaming patent leather shoes. . . . Yolande’s gown was made of moiré silk, buttercup yellow, and her shoes matched the bride’s: made of fine white kid with small high heels and tiny pearl buttons. Ah, she had
loved
it. Loved them. Loved the entire day.

Her side began to ache, from walking so fast, she was out of breath and the straw hat had been knocked askew. How deep the woods were, how eerily beautiful. . . . Children might play at the edge of the forest but girls Yolande’s age were cautioned not to walk in it, not even in twos or threes, and certainly not alone. If Lily knew—! If grandmother Cornelia knew—! “Oh, for God’s sake what do you think will happen to me,” Yolande snorted, “do you think I’ll be
raped,
for God’s sake!” Lily stared at her as if she’d never heard anything so astonishing. She missed the opportunity, even, to be angry: just stood there staring at her brash arrogant daughter. “Well, Mother, I mean . . . I mean, for God’s sake,” Yolande murmured weakly. “You know very well that nothing can happen to me in our own woods.”

Tales of girls alone in the forest many years ago: someone named Hepatica, a distant aunt or cousin, who had walked alone in this very woods, evidently, and had met . . . or been confronted by . . . by whom, by what? Yolande did not recall. There were hints that something had happened or almost happened to aunt Veronica, long ago (but it would have to be
long
ago, Yolande giggled, for poor thick-waisted homely aunt Veronica was hardly the type of woman to drive men into a frenzy of lust), and something had almost happened to Aveline as well. . . . Cautionary tales, frankly silly tales that Yolande only pretended to listen to: she
knew
very well how foolish the older women were being. Yolande this, Yolande that. Yolande, don’t run, you must learn to walk like a lady, and when entering a room you should . . . you should not . . . you should. . . . Never cross your knees, don’t cross your arms either, you don’t want to flatten your bosom but you certainly don’t want to make it prominent by crossing your arms beneath. . . .
Are
you listening? Where is your mind?

Yolande!

A white-and-brown hare bounded away in terror so extreme she halfway thought it must be playful or mocking. Why run from
her,
what possible harm might
she
do? “Oh, you silly bunny! Silly dear darling bunny. . . .” There were deer in the Bellefleur woods, hidden from sight; and owls and foxes and raccoons and pheasants; there might be bears—though probably not so close to the house; there might be (and here Yolande swallowed hard, for she hadn’t thought of this earlier, she never thought of such ugly distressing things) snakes . . . long thick squirming hideous snakes. . . . (Hadn’t Garth brought home, the summer before, a twelve-footer?—draped about his neck, its head bashed in, is warm glinting coral-brown skin looking supple as if it still breathed?) But snakes, she knew, felt the vibrations of footsteps, and fled . . . even the poisonous snakes fled . . . most of the time. Snakes do not
want
to confront human beings, it was said.

Once there had been panthers and wolves in this very forest, but they had been killed off, or driven out. From time to time the Noir Vulture appeared, a bold vicious predator that could lift creatures the size of foxes and fawns into the air, and tear them apart as it flew, ripping and stabbing with its long thin beak: but the Noir Vulture was nearly extinct, and Yolande had certainly never caught a glimpse of one; even her brothers had never seen one. “Oh, very likely there isn’t such a thing,” Yolande murmured aloud, “very likely they’ve just made it up to scare us. . . .”

Another panicked crashing through the underbrush. This was a somewhat larger creature, and Yolande’s heart leapt as if it wanted to burst free of her body. Ah—what a commotion! But there was nothing to fear. A pity that the forest creatures lived in such terror, bounding away from Yolande Bellefleur in her pretty blue skirt and her smart straw hat, as if they imagined she was a hunter. . . . Her heart was still pounding. It shared in the creature’s frenzied panic, and wanted to fly free of her ribs and escape into the forest.

Yolande stood motionless, until the attack of panic subsided. Overhead was a small patch of sky, straight overhead, no more than a few inches in circumference: it looked like a faint blue ball poised on the topmost branches of the pines. “Well—if it rains I won’t get wet,” Yolande said aloud. “The rain couldn’t penetrate all
that.
”

She came upon a glade of long, bent-over grass, where coarse chicory grew, and another blue flower she couldn’t resist picking and entwining in the band of her hat—were they dayflowers?—and now she looked very pert and pretty indeed; and where was her lover?

The glade would have been, she saw, an appropriate meeting place.

There was no one to observe her kicking off her shoes, and dancing three steps in one direction, and three steps in another. . . . And she began to sing, to hum, even to whistle, snapping her fingers, even lifting her skirts for a little impish kick that showed her petticoats. In the city last June she’d seen a music hall show, she’d marveled at the dancers’ white satin outfits, their high-piled black hair that gleamed like tar, their garishly made-up faces, their—but what was it!—their
style.
One or two of the girls had seemed not much older than Yolande herself. She might have sneaked backstage, she might have knocked at a dressing-room door to inquire timidly how one became a dancer or a singer . . . ? Or an actress . . . ?

A pity her lover was late. A pity he couldn’t hear Yolande singing the rousing “When the Boys Come Home” with which the music hall program had ended: the girls high-stepping, in white boots, with red-white-and-blue streamers across their breasts, and high fur hats that might have been made of ermine.

Then she broke off, since she’d forgotten the words. It was such an old song. What did she want with an old song. She took off her hat and sailed it onto the grass and, shaking her hair vigorously, gave her lips that poutish smile Aunt Leah used so frequently, while her eyes—but ah! her eyes were so much more
powerful
than Yolande’s—widened mischievously. Even when she sang to the darling new baby, even then her face was so, so . . . but Yolande’s face was narrower, smaller . . . her lips weren’t so full . . . perhaps she only made herself ridiculous, imitating her aunt? And then she did not even like Leah. Decidedly, she did not like Leah. She wanted to snatch that baby out of Leah’s arms and sing to it in her own voice, in her own way,

Sleep, baby, sleep,

Thy father watches the sheep,

Thy mother shakes the dreamland tree,

And down falls a little dream on thee.
. . .

Her voice was husky, wispy, melancholy. She wondered—could it be trained? The lighthearted dancing-about songs called forth a high girlish voice, and made her want to dance energetically about; but the lullaby called forth a different voice. Which was nicer, Yolande wondered; which would her lover prefer. . . . ?

She sang the lullaby again, rocking an imaginary baby in her arms. A single tear rolled down her cheek. Her blue eyes glittered and her lips trembled with an emotion she could not disguise; but there was no one to observe.

Or was there someone nearby . . . ?

She broke off the lullaby and glanced around with a half-smile on her lips, for it
was
possible that . . .

“Who’s there?” she called out gaily.

A mild wind blew through the topmost branches of the pines so that the cones stirred and winked.

She danced about in circles until she was breathless, and then threw herself down on the sun-warmed grass, and closed her eyes, and felt within seconds how her lover approached her, crouching over her, the hairs of his mustache drawing near. . . . Ah, what if his kiss tickled! “Doesn’t such a thing tickle,” she had asked Irma, and both girls had collapsed in a fit of giggling, burying their overheated faces in the pillows of Irma’s bed.

But she must not giggle now. She wasn’t a child. The moment was sacred. Her lover (whose eyes were very dark and moist, whose mustache was small, trim, neat, and gave off an odor of wax) was simply bending over to kiss her, as lovers do, as men do, it is really quite commonplace, it is not at all unusual, nothing frightening. . . . But it
might
tickle.

She had expected another lover, a young man whose family owned a large farm on the Innisfail Road, ah, what was his name, how strange, how very strange, she was losing his name, though it was a name she murmured to herself a dozen times each day, what
was
that young man’s name . . . She was expecting, perhaps, her uncle Gideon: sometimes just as she sank into sleep his lips brushed against hers: they were often in a sleigh hitched to Jupiter, flying across an ice-bound Lake Noir beneath a full moon, Gideon in the remarkable fur coat—made of muskrat pelts as darkly lustrous as mink—he had had fashioned for himself some years back, as a playful match to Leah’s ankle-length Russian sable. His expression was stern, he did not smile, in fact he looked through her as he usually did around the house, and yet—suddenly—wonderfully—he leaned over to her and brushed his lips against hers—

She shivered. Her eyes were not simply closed, but shut tight. Her lover
was
leaning over her. His eyelashes curved upward, his skin was a faint olive color, he gave off an air of profound, slack melancholy, he was no one she had ever seen before.

“Mother,” Yolande would ask Lily that very day, “doesn’t a kiss tickle, now tell me the truth!”