Bellefleur (47 page)

“I CAN’T BELIEVE
that the family has given up on this man,” Leah said. “I can’t believe you’ve done so
little.
”

They tried to explain to her about the appeals, and the many thousands of dollars spent; one or two attempted bribes—that is, gifts—which were unfortunately offered to the wrong officials; and of course other family difficulties; and Jean-Pierre’s apathetic manner. He had, for instance, never applied for parole. Not once in thirty-three years. While at first he seemed mildly happy to see visitors he soon changed, and frequently refused to enter the visiting room; once, while Noel presented an earnest, enthusiastic case for the probability of his verdict being overturned by the Supreme Court, he leaned forward slowly and spat against the glass partition that separated them. Never in his life, Noel said afterward, had he been so
thunderstruck.

“The poor man must have fallen into despair,” Leah said. “Everything I’ve heard about Powhatassie has been vile, incredibly degrading, it’s a place for
animals,
not human beings. . . . Perhaps he’s ill? Does anyone know? Cornelia says he has never answered his mail, and he’s never answered my letters; but then of course he doesn’t know me. I don’t suppose he even knows Gideon. Does he
remember
any of you? When is the last time anyone has visited him?”

They could not remember, exactly. Noel believed he had visited Jean-Pierre for the last time some thirty-two years ago (the Sunday of the spitting incident, in fact); Hiram believed he had tried to see him more recently—
perhaps
twenty-five years ago—but wasn’t certain whether Jean-Pierre had condescended to appear in the visitors’ room. (A hideous place, all concrete and wire mesh and armed guards, and such a din!—for the prisoners and their visitors had to shout at one another, and there were usually upward of fifty people in the room, all shouting helplessly at the same time. And, Hiram said with an angry flushed face, he was once beside a backwoods woman come to visit her husband, sentenced to Powhatassie for life: the pathetic woman was weeping and moaning, and had no more shame than to unbutton her dress to show her lardy, sagging breasts to her husband.) Their mother had visited him for the last time approximately twenty years ago; when she returned home she went at once to her bedchamber, where she remained, weeping, for several days. Aunt Veronica had never gone, since she left her rooms only after sundown, and visiting hours were from two to five; Della had gone once or twice, and Matilde only a few times. (It was thought that Matilde’s reclusiveness began at the time of Jean-Pierre’s trial. She turned away all suitors, frequently dressed in men’s clothing (but not
nice
men’s clothing, Cornelia said; farmhand sort of clothing), spent more and more time out at the old camp, and finally moved there permanently, pretending that a life of raising hens, growing vegetables, and making quilts, samplers, and silly little “artistic” things like carvings was any sort of life for a Bellefleur.) Lamentations of Jeremiah had visited his son as often as Jean-Pierre would allow, which wasn’t often because, to perpetrate Elvira’s myth, he liked to claim that the telegram summoning him home had ruined his life—he
had
been nearly engaged to an Italian
marchesa
whose family dated back to the twelfth century, and Jeremiah’s latest financial debacle had brought the whole house of cards tumbling down. And then of course Jeremiah had died in the Great Flood of twenty years back. So Jean-Pierre hadn’t had a visitor from the outside world in twenty years.

“I will visit him,” Leah said. “My little girl and I will visit him.”

“Oh, but you couldn’t take a
child,
” Cornelia cried.

And Hiram said, twisting the ends of his mustache nervously, “The one thing, dear, you know, that’s been a kind of stumbling block . . . or perhaps there are two . . . or many. . . . Well, to be frank: his story about the peddler, a peddler allegedly driving a mule-drawn wagon along the Innisfail Road at night . . . in the pitch-black . . . a peddler never glimpsed before or since . . . the story is, isn’t it? . . . somewhat strained. And there was the matter of Folderol covered with sweaty scum, and her ankles badly scratched, and her hooves all muddy. . . .”

“Folderol—?” Leah cried, staring at him. “What in heaven’s name are you talking about, Uncle?”

“Folderol was the name of—”

“But you just don’t
want
to help him, do you!” Leah said, pressing her hands to her cheeks as if they were burning. “You think that the ignominy has been lived down simply because people have forgotten. But they
haven’t
forgotten—not really! Suppose Christabel, for instance, fell in love with a—a Schaff, or a Horehound—or one of those old Vanderpoel families—I mean with the son of one of those families—do you think they would countenance a match with a
Bellefleur,
as things stand?

“We must think ahead,” Leah said, shaking a cigarillo out of a package. “Didn’t Raphael once say—it isn’t possible to think
too far
ahead—”

“Christabel
is
maturing rapidly,” Cornelia murmured.

Noel threw up his hands in angry despair. “But if you visit my brother, dear, what precisely will you talk about? It isn’t as if you know him, after all. I doubt that I would recognize him myself. We tried so often to press him into applying for parole, and in the end he was really quite abusive; in fact I had the distinct impression that he’d settled in, at Powhatassie, as he never had out
here.
The men are allowed to play cards, you know, and according to the warden (at that time—I’m afraid I don’t know the current warden) there was always a game going out in the yard, or in the recreation hall, and Jean-Pierre had taught the other men a dozen kinds of poker, and gin rummy, and casino, and euchre, and even bridge—We had hoped he might at least apply for parole, despite Judge Petrie’s admonition to the state, but he never did; perhaps he didn’t want to risk another humiliation, then again perhaps he didn’t want to risk being freed.”

“I don’t want a parole,” Leah said impatiently. “I want a pardon.”

“A pardon?”

“From the governor. A pardon. Exoneration.”

“A
pardon?
For Jean-Pierre?”

At that very moment Germaine ran into the room and clambered up on Leah’s lap. She had something very exciting to tell her mother—something about one of the cats being treed by a Minorca rooster—but Leah quieted her, and brushed her hair back from her overheated forehead. Perhaps to give the older Bellefleurs time to recover (for Leah, despite her impetuousness, was keenly sensitive to others’ feelings) she turned her attentions to her daughter, wetting a forefinger to wipe away some dirt, kissing the child’s flushed cheek. “Aren’t you a pretty girl,” Leah whispered. “Aren’t you
blessed.
”

And finally, after a long silence, Cornelia said weakly: “But at least don’t take Germaine, dear.”

The Elopement

O
ne fine autumn morning when the last of the leaves—the golden maples—were blazing with light, and the sky was so coldly pellucid a turquoise-blue that it resembled stained glass, Garth and Little Goldie ran off together, in Garth’s new Buick, leaving behind only a scribbled note (in Little Goldie’s childlike hand) slipped under Ewan’s and Lily’s door:
Gone to get marri’d.
They sped southward, crossing the borders of several states, until, breathless, they arrived in one that would marry them within three days; and so they were married. Because of the circumstances of their surprise elopement they had time to heap in the rumble seat of the Buick only a few of Little Goldie’s dresses (she had so many—for her new-adopted family was very generous with new things as well as cast-off but still perfectly wearable things—it would have been impossible to choose: so she and Garth merely grabbed an armful out of the closet), the single suit of Garth’s he found tolerable to wear, for brief periods (it was made of brown mohair-and-cotton, with a modest lapel and many brass buttons; its trousers were too short but in other respects attractive), and the old Swiss music box from the nursery. They had also taken a half-dozen items from the Great Hall whose value they couldn’t have guessed; instinct guided them as blindly toward a rare sixteenth-century German bell metal mortar and pestle as toward a crystal knickknack from Victoria’s England, or a “snowstorm” paperweight of undetermined origin. Raiding a few rooms during the very early hours of the night, whispering and giggling, on tiptoe, barefoot, they accumulated about $2,300 in loose cash taken, in such irregular amounts, from the pockets of coats and jackets, from out of drawers, from between the pages of books (in Raphael’s library they found a great deal, though some of it was in currency that “looked funny”—so they left it behind), and even from piggy banks, that the money was never to be missed. And of course Garth had some money of his own.

The previous day, something very peculiar had happened between Garth and his uncle Gideon, which was never to be satisfactorily explained.

It seemed that several of the children—Little Goldie, Christabel, Morna—were in the old garden room, playing with the twin ginger kittens everyone adored (though they were not kittens any longer, really, being about five months old now, with long slender bodies and very white whiskers, and unusually large feet), when Mahalaleel, the kittens’ father, appeared suddenly at one of the windows, mewing to be let inside. In an uncannily human gesture he brought one paw slowly down against the glass, unsheathing his claws, and the children looked around, startled. (For Mahalaleel had been gone from the manor for nearly two weeks, and Leah had about given up on him.)

So the children let him inside, and were delighted at his interest in the kittens, whom he began to groom with all the assiduity of a mother cat. In the posture of a sphinx he reclined before them, gripping them both between his front legs, washing now one, now the other, with his rough pink tongue, his eyes half-shut with pleasure. And the kittens (who
did
appear to be kittens again, suddenly diminished beside their magnificent fluffy-haired father) pressed against him, purring loudly. Little Goldie had not seen Mahalaleel close up. She knelt to watch him wash the kittens, her brown eyes fixed upon him with a curious intensity. How beautiful Mahalaleel was, though tiny cockleburrs were sticking to his fur—how silky, how luxurious, with the roseate highlights of his thick coat, and the pattern, so intricate as to be almost vertiginous, of its myriad colors: gray and pinkish-gray and
orange
-and-bronze and frosted black! And his pale green eyes with their black, somewhat dilated centers. . . . Little Goldie murmured that she had never seen a cat like Mahalaleel. She leaned closer, staring. Her long hair fell slowly forward, framing her small face.

“Do you think I could pet him?” she said.

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t—he doesn’t know you yet,” Christabel said.

“Oh, go ahead, he’s
friendly,
” impish Morna said.

So Little Goldie quite innocently reached out to touch Mahalaleel. And whether because the creature was genuinely startled by the movement of her hand, or whether because he imagined she meant harm to the kittens—or whether he was simply outraged that a stranger should presume to stroke
his
head—he snarled and lashed out at her. And in that single instant he scratched the poor child’s forearm quite badly—the tender inside of the arm, near the elbow. Blood sprang out from four distinct slashes and ran quickly down her arm to drip onto the floor.

“Oh! Oh, look what he
did!
” Little Goldie cried in astonishment.

She was more surprised than frightened, but the other girls screamed for help (Christabel in particular, since the sight of blood terrified her), and they were fortunate enough to attract the attention of one of the adults—Gideon—who was just passing by. He hurried inside, saw what had happened, clapped his hands angrily to frighten the hissing Mahalaleel away—
Mahalaleel
and the kittens as well—and dropped to his knees to examine Little Goldie’s wound. “Now don’t cry, you’ll be all right,” he murmured, wrapping a handkerchief around her arm, soaking up the bright blood. “You
shouldn’t
have gotten near that bastard of a cat. But you’ll be all right: these are only scratches.”

It must have been the case that Garth was also nearby, perhaps dawdling in the corridor; because he too heard the girls’ screams, and ran into the room less than a minute after his uncle. He came to a stop abruptly, staring at Gideon and Little Goldie, who were both kneeling on the tessellated floor. The girls told him what had happened—how naughty Mahalaleel had been—but he did not seem to hear. “What happened,” he asked in a queer strangled voice, “what
happened
to her—”

Gideon glanced around at him, and said, “Go get Lissa, will you, and say there’s been a little accident—one of the cats has scratched Little Goldie—we need bandages, and some disinfectant—”

“What
happened,
what are you
doing,
” Garth said.

He towered above them, six feet tall, his jaw suddenly slack, his long thick arms hanging loose. Gideon repeated what he had said, but Garth heard nothing; he was simply staring at them.

“For Christ’s sake, Garth—” Gideon began: but Garth suddenly seized him and wrenched him away from Little Goldie, and threw himself on top of him, shouting incoherently. His fists rose and fell, he kneed his uncle in the chest, tried to close his fingers around his throat. It all happened so quickly that the girls stared in amazement, too surprised even to call for help for several seconds. What
was
happening! Had Garth suddenly gone mad!

The two men rolled over and over, colliding with the legs of a chair, knocking the chair against the wall. Someone ran to the doorway. There were shouts and more screams. Gideon shoved Garth away with his knee, but Garth, his face a bright hideous red, managed to throw himself down again, his fingers outstretched. He was babbling that he would kill his uncle—that nothing was going to stop him.