Bellefleur (52 page)

The tragedy of Samuel Bellefleur’s “love match” was well known despite the Bellefleurs’ attempts to keep it secret, and to this day a worried adult might wonder aloud whether, when a child was behaving badly, he or she might also
go over to the other side.
(The crude expression
take up with Negroes
was sometimes used as well.) Hiram’s marriage to unhappy Eliza Perkins lasted hardly more than a year, but could not be said, even initially, to have been a love match; and though Della’s ill-fated marriage to Stanton Pym
was
a love match, on her testimony at least, it came to an abrupt and tragic conclusion, albeit an accidental conclusion, after only a few months. And then there was Raoul, about whom no one dared speak above a whisper.

Most extraordinary of all, however, was the “love match” of poor Hepatica Bellefleur.

Hepatica lived a very long time ago, but her example was often raised when Bellefleur girls behaved in a headstrong manner. You know what happened to Hepatica—! their mothers said. And even the boldest of the girls grew sober.

Hepatica was a very pretty, and very spoiled, young girl of sixteen when she fell in love with the man who called himself Duane Doty Fox. (When, in subsequent years, Jeremiah became acquainted with relatives of the legitimate Duane Doty—the Wisconsin land speculator and circuit judge of some renown—they claimed to have never heard of “Duane Doty Fox.” Which was unsurprising.)

Sunny, even-tempered, sometimes a little childish, Hepatica had long wavy hair in coloring rather like Yolande’s, and a fondness for concocting, as often as the cook would allow, elaborate fanciful dishes of her own
invention
—a shellfish-and-whipped-cream mousse, an extremely sweet
syllabub
, a peanut-butter-and-pineapple tart that was a favorite of the children’s to this very day; and of course, being a wealthy young Bellefleur heiress, and a strikingly pretty one as well, she had innumerable suitors, among them several very desirable young men (and some no longer young, precisely, but desirable just the same for various practical reasons): but without so much as asking her parents permission, she turned them all rudely down. I don’t ever want to get married, she said, making a fastidious little moue; I don’t want all that
fuss.

But then, one warm April afternoon, while being driven home from the village (where she frequently visited with the rector’s daughter—the only girl in the vicinity who was not too embarrassingly a social inferior) she happened to see, working with a small gang of laborers alongside the road, a most unusual young man. He was tall—he was shirtless—he wore a straw hat pulled low over his forehead—and as the Bellefleur two-seater passed he raised his head slowly, with the unhurried calm of a creature so wild, so totally undomesticated, that he had yet to discover pain at the hands of human beings: and stared openly at Hepatica in her yellow polka-dot frock and bonnet. No other man in the area would have dared look at her in quite that way; even small children, living in the vicinity of the castle, were cautioned not to
stare.

But how silly he was, Hepatica thought, shirtless, gleaming with perspiration, his chest hair furry and frizzy—how wonderfully hilarious! (For it was extraordinary, the sight of a bare-chested man, particularly along the lakefront road—which was very nearly a private road of the Bellefleurs, though in theory it was open to anyone. Most unusual, Hepatica thought.
Most
strange.)

She saw too that he was handsome, though swarthy-skinned; and bearded (and she was not at all certain that she liked beards). For days afterward she kept seeing him at the side of the road, lowering his pickax to gaze at her, his face strong and broad and deeply tanned, his eyes very dark; dark but gleaming;
intensely
gleaming—or so she imagined. It did no good to chatter about him and ridicule him, to whoever would listen, for she kept thinking about him, thinking and thinking about him, and at the mere suggestion of a walk to the village, or even down to the lake, her heart fluttered so that she felt almost faint.

Where a more modest (or at least a more prudent) girl would have waited to encounter the young man again by accident, Hepatica, acting with a single-minded impetuosity more suitable, perhaps, in one of her brothers, made inquiries among the servants and the villagers, and soon learned that the young man, new to the area (he had just come down from Canada, it was believed, and had lived for a while previously in Wisconsin), was a blacksmith’s assistant and a laborer-for-hire in the village; and his name was Duane Doty Fox.

Did he have any family? shameless Hepatica asked. Did he have a wife?

Evidently he had no one—no one at all. It wasn’t even known where, exactly, he lived.

Ah, but didn’t he live in the village? Hepatica asked.

He worked in the village but he lived, so far as anyone knew, up in the woods. A strange, quiet, unfriendly man . . . though he was said to be an excellent worker.

And so one fine spring day Hepatica walked to the village, accompanied by a servant girl whom she sent off on an errand of embarrassing flimsiness, and, quite alone, quite fearless, she strode directly to the blacksmith’s shop (where her family never did business, since at that time the Bellefleurs employed their own blacksmith), and met with Duane Doty Fox. It isn’t known what they talked of, at that first meeting—the conversation must have been awkward and strained—Hepatica
must
have been somewhat embarrassed—though perhaps (she was a marvelously inventive and imaginative child, and told lies with such a pretty flair that they never seemed serious) she simply prattled on about her favorite pony and his need for new horseshoes. She might have asked him about Canada, what sort of Indians and wild beasts lived there; or about Wisconsin; or what he thought of the new President; or any flibbertigibbet thing that flew into her head.

And so they met, and fell in love. Hepatica Bellefleur and the swarthy stranger known only as Duane Doty Fox: and it was a measure of Hepatica’s precocious ingenuity that they contrived to meet some five or six times (always in the woods, or along a little-frequented stretch of Lake Noir; once on the banks of Bloody Run, high above the water) without arousing the family’s suspicions. Just when the first of the gossip made its way to the manor, Hepatica, her eyes shining, brought Fox into the castle itself and introduced him—introduced him as her husband-to-be. There was her tiny white hand in his enormous grimy fist—there was her curly wheat-colored hair beside his shoulder. It was not even a question of love, Hepatica said bluntly. It was a question of
need.
Neither could live without the other and that was that. . . .

The family objected, as one might expect. But Hepatica, perhaps telling the truth and perhaps not, simply whispered something in her mother’s ear; something feverish and secret and unsurprising. And so the engagement took place. And then the wedding—a private wedding attended by only a few Bellefleurs, in the old manor chapel.

Are you happy? Hepatica’s girl cousins asked enviously.

She had only to smile at them, showing her lovely white teeth, and they knew the answer. But there was something alarming (or so they liked to say, afterward) about the intensity of feeling in her. . . . It was overwrought and exaggerated and unhealthy. Why, just to see that big dark brute squeeze his bride’s hand in his, and smile his hesitant but unmistakably sensual smile . . . ! Just to be
near
the couple, and sense the unrestrained passion of their “love” . . .

The Bellefleurs were generous, however, and gave the couple a small farm up in the foothills, on Mink Creek, with the promise of assistance whenever Fox should request it, and the promise—unstated, but quite
tangible
—to Hepatica that she might return at any time. (For she wasn’t the first Bellefleur to have married impetuously. And she might very well, like some of the others, wake one morning to a realization of her mistake.)

Now time passed: weeks and months and part of a year. And the young couple kept to themselves. Though frequently invited to the manor they never came. Hepatica’s parents were heartbroken; and then angry; and bewildered; and again heartbroken; but what was to be done? They drove out to the farm as often as they dared (not being invited), and spent an empty hour or so with Hepatica, who looked and behaved much the same as usual, and insisted that she
adored
being an old-fashioned wife who did her own cooking and baking and housecleaning. (Though the house hardly looked clean. And the coffee cake she offered her parents, along with tea served in Sèvres cups already cracked, tasted lardy—not at all the sort of thing she had made at home.) Duane Doty Fox stayed out in the field, working. Or in the barn. Working. Shirtless, with his dirty straw hat set rakishly on his head, in manure-splattered boots. He did no more than wave a pawlike hand at his in-laws, ducking into a doorway, turning away out of shyness or indifference. How crude he was, their new son-in-law! How clumsy, how barely human!

And then one of Hepatica’s uncles encountered Fox at a supply store beside the lake, and was astonished at the sight of him: for he hadn’t remembered his niece’s fiancé as
quite
so dark and hairy. And he was gruff as well: mumbled in so guttural a voice the storekeeper could hardly understand him. His muscular shoulders were somewhat stooped, and his neck was thick, and his beard was tangled and snarled. Worst of all, he barely responded to Hepatica’s uncle’s courteous greeting. A nasal sound that was part a grunt and part a snarl . . . and that was all.

Imagine, so primitive a man married into the Bellefleur family . . . !

During the long winter they kept to themselves, but soon after the first thaw Hepatica arrived at the manor, unaccompanied—she’d just ridden over for an afternoon’s visit, she said, and didn’t want anyone to make a fuss. Though she kept up a steady stream of chatter—charming and girlish and entertaining as always—she was obviously unhappy, and there were sad dark dents beneath her eyes. But to every question she replied in the same bright insouciant way, saying only that it was a pity Duane couldn’t be talked into coming along—but he was so shy, he was so
very
shy—he hoped they would understand.

(Was Hepatica pregnant? The question couldn’t be asked, and she gave no hints. But she
was
distressed about something, despite her frivolous conversation.)

From time to time Bellefleur men encountered Fox in the area, and it was something of a joke, at first, how coarse and bearish he had become. Hepatica’s cooking, perhaps? Or had he always inclined toward stoutness? His beard was no bushier than ever, perhaps, but now hair grew on his throat, and no doubt on his shoulders. There were tufts of thick hair on the backs of his hands. His eyes, which had been of ordinary size in the past, so far as anyone remembered, now looked small and close-set; even rather stupidly cruel. (Was he drinking? Was he drunk when they met him? He always brushed past or turned away, often without even a grunted hello.) They joked of “Fox,” saying that he hadn’t the comeliness of a red or even a gray fox; he hadn’t a fox’s intelligent grace. His hair resembled thick dark quills, heavy with oil. And his nose . . . his nose had become somewhat flattened, hadn’t it . . . ?

Or were they imagining everything? (For the Bellefleurs, despite their affection for Hepatica, could not resist jests of a coarse nature; and such jests—as the men readily admitted—required a certain distortion of human reality.)

Hepatica came to visit her mother more and more frequently, and sometimes she began weeping as soon as she arrived; but she never explained what was wrong. Asked why she was crying she would say lightly, Oh, I just feel sad! or, I’m such a silly girl, wasn’t I always a silly girl, don’t take any notice of me!

But they noticed that she was thinner (and she had always been a slight, nervous little thing), and that she blinked her eyes rapidly while she spoke, and looked out the window frequently. There were bruises on her wrist and neck. There was an odd long wavering scratch on the back of her left hand. Oh, that’s just a cat scratch! she said, laughing. Don’t take any notice of it.

One day her mother asked her if she wouldn’t like to move back to the manor? Her room was in readiness for her, unchanged; she could at least stay a few nights; and perhaps everything could be discussed. . . .

But there’s nothing to be “discussed,” she said listlessly. I love my husband and he loves me. There’s nothing else.

He loves you—he truly loves you?

Oh, yes.

And you love him?

Well—yes.

You
do
love him?

Yes.

Hepatica—?

I said
yes.

She spoke emphatically but with an air of bewilderment. As if she did not quite know what to say . . . only what ought to be said.

Leaving the manor she turned to her mother, and embraced her, and seemed about to burst into tears; but she restrained herself.

I don’t
know,
Mamma, if anything is wrong. I’ve never been married before, the poor child whispered.

AFTER THAT SHE
stayed away for months. And when her father and one of his brothers drove up to see her, Fox met them in the driveway, and said, or seemed to say (for they could barely understand his slurred words) that Hepatica was “resting” and wasn’t “receiving visitors.”

Now it was clear that Fox had changed considerably. He could no longer be considered even remotely attractive. His teeth were tobacco-stained, he gave off a fetid, meaty odor, tufts of hair grew alarmingly on the backs of his hands and high on his cheeks, and his eyebrows, which had always been thick and glowering, had gone wild. His hair was greasy, tumbling to his massive, muscle-choked shoulders; his small cruel red-rimmed eyes glared like a beast’s. He
was
a beast. It was suddenly quite clear—both Hepatica’s father and her uncle realized the fact, at the same moment—quite clear, that Hepatica had married a beast.