Bellefleur (65 page)

The man who was to be Germaine’s grandfather—her
other
grandfather
—was, at the age of twenty-seven, already a bank officer in the First National Bank of Nautauga Falls. Apart from his natty dress (which of course was reserved for weekends) and his habit of repeating jokes judged to be only mildly amusing, he was a serious, even rather grave young man—wonderfully ambitious—bright and hard-working and wonderfully ambitious, as the bank’s president told Noel Bellefleur one day. He had a talent for bank work and had specialized in mortgage loans. He
knew
a great deal. “. . . Is my financial situation part of what the young bastard knows?” Noel asked.

Of course it was clear that Stanton Pym was pursuing Della Bellefleur for her money and property—or for the promise of it, when she inherited; why otherwise would he have switched so readily, and, it seemed, so adroitly, from his courtship of the daughter of a Falls glove manufacturer to Della, when the glove manufacturer’s business was sold at a loss?—though of course Stanton Pym withdrew from his pursuit of the girl long before the factory was actually sold, and before, even, rumors surfaced. It was simply the case, people said admiringly, that the bright young man
knew
a great deal.

At the First National Bank of Nautauga Falls Pym dressed in well-tailored and somber three-piece suits, and walked about with an almost military briskness and formality. If his grandfather had slaved in the pitiless midsummer sun to help build the Great Canal, and had died, of an undiagnosed internal hemorrhage, while lifting a shovel heavy with wet clay, at the age of forty-three; if his father had ruined his eyes and developed a hump between his shoulder blades, working a fourteen-hour day as an assistant bookkeeper for the largest textile mill in the region, and if he was dismissed after thirty years’ service with no more than a token “pension”—exactly why, no one knew, though the dismissal might have had something to do with the man’s failing eyesight and his perpetual melancholia—young Stanton seemed to know nothing of these indignities, and sometimes seemed, if questioned by people from his old neighborhood, to know nothing, with an almost charmingly innocent arrogance, of his family at all, living or dead. He gave his mother part of his salary, of course, and visited her as often as possible, but his new responsibilities—his new life—took up most of his time.

If, in the First National Bank with its sepulchral pretensions (though it was not the largest bank in Nautauga Falls it boasted a truly impressive neo-Georgian façade, and its floors, of simulated marble, were agreeably cold; it had cut- and frosted glass windows and, guarding the stairs to the vault, a pewter grille weighty as a medieval portcullis) young Stanton Pym dressed with admirable sobriety, and if he was careful to appear not only modest but self-effacing at the Methodist ceremonies he attended, at other times—
Saturdays
and Sundays in particular—he dressed in the latest men’s styles and, had he been somewhat taller, and his eyes less close-set, he would have been one of the most striking of the “new” young men. (They sometimes appeared to be everywhere in those days—ambitious sons of farmers or even farmers’ laborers—back from serving in the army, or back from a two-year course at business school, considerably taller than their parents, with firm frank handshakes and expectant smiles, and no intention whatsoever of living as their families had lived.)

Pym had no more than two or three outfits for each season, but by switching vests, wearing different shoes (sometimes white, sometimes white-and-brown, sometimes brown, sometimes black, depending upon the season and the time of day) and different neckties and hats, he was able to give the impression of being fashionable as any of the wealthier young men. (Far more “fashionable,” after all, than the Bellefleurs—for young Noel and his many cousins cared more for horses, hunting, fishing, boating and other masculine preoccupations than they did for society.) In summer months he wore white as often as possible—white trousers, smartly creased; white shoes; the red-and-white-striped blazer; even white gloves—despite its impracticality (for he had, after all, an automobile to contend with—first a Model-T, which demanded a fair amount of tinkering and adjusting, and then the little English car, acquired secondhand from one of the bank’s customers). It was in this jaunty summer costume that Della Bellefleur first saw him, on the boardwalk at White Sulphur Springs.

He was escorting the glove manufacturer’s daughter, whom Della of course knew, but knew slightly, and without any great warmth. A slender young man, no more than Della’s height, a year or two younger than she, perhaps, with pomaded dark hair parted precisely in the center of his head, and a small dark mustache, like a fuzzy caterpillar, riding his short upper lip. That Sunday, he even carried a cane with an ebony knob. Della and Stanton Pym exchanged no more than a half-dozen words upon that occasion, for there were so many other people close about, in his party and in her own, but Della sensed immediately—and was never to be shaken from her conviction, not thirty years after Pym’s death—that Pym,
before
being introduced to her,
before
knowing she was one of the two Bellefleur heiresses, had stared at her with a curious startled intensity as if . . . as if he recognized her . . . or saw something in her face. . . . As if, in that first moment, on the crowded White Sulphur Springs boardwalk, he
knew.

(Perhaps it was not love at first sight, Della was one day to tell Germaine, as she turned the pages of her old photograph album, because I don’t believe such a phenomenon exists . . . and if it does, it’s immoral. But there is such a thing as immediate regard. Immediate sympathy. And intelligent and fully conscious
awareness
of another’s worth.)

At that time Della was twenty-nine years old. She was not a pretty woman, nor even—with her long nose and her prim censorious stare—a very attractive woman, but she carried herself proudly, and was known for her common sense and her reliability; her smile, when she smiled,
could
be appealing. It had been the family’s intention for some years to marry her to a cousin-twice-removed who lived in the Falls with his widowed mother and spent his time speculating, fairly modestly, in real estate, but the match was stalemated by Della’s and the cousin’s silence on the subject. Do you actively dislike Elias, Della’s mother and aunts interrogated her, is there anything about him that strikes you as unacceptable . . . ? Or are you simply being stubborn?
Why
don’t you say something?

But Della said nothing, and though she and her cousin were brought together frequently, and encouraged to stroll about alone together, their “match” rested in a kind of apathetic equilibrium. They would be married someday—perhaps—but in the meantime there was no engagement. Della was spoken for, and no other suitors stepped forward, and the years passed, and though Della’s mother and aunts discussed the situation tirelessly Della herself refused to discuss it at all. She quite liked her virginal status. She was
not
stubborn, as she frequently declared.

And then, suddenly, there was Stanton Pym.

How Pym knew about Della’s conversion to Methodism, how he knew that she attended Wednesday evening services at the little country church (but not Sunday services: the family forbade
that
), how he managed to insinuate himself into her company there (for Della, being a Bellefleur, tended to hold herself somewhat apart from the others, even in her enthusiasm for their religion), how he managed to overcome her suspicions; no one knew. But suddenly they were “courting.” They were said to be “sweet on each other.” Noel learned that Pym went to the Methodist church only on Wednesdays, and that he had never been a serious churchgoer in the past; he learned that Pym had begun seeing Della only a week after withdrawing as a candidate for the hand of the glove manufacturer’s daughter. He’s after her, the Bellefleurs said, with an air of genuine surprise, he’s actually
after
her. . . . Pym himself so misjudged Della’s family attitude toward him that he was always extending his hand to the men when they happened to meet, smiling his perky little smile, commenting on the weather, telling jokes. (He very much enjoyed his own jokes and laughed richly at them, though never in the funereal recesses of the First National Bank.)

The family disapproved, quite vocally, but of course Della paid them no mind: she went out with Pym in the Morris Bullnose, delighted as a young girl, her flower-bedecked hat tied firmly beneath her chin. The two of them were seen on the amusement rides at the state fair, they were seen rowing at Silver Lake, at sunset, and dining together by candlelight in the Nautauga House; Della even admitted, after close questioning, to having been introduced to Stanton’s mother. (Of course the mother is impossible, Della said stiffly, she kept touching my arm and fawning on me and asking the most ridiculous questions—how many servants we had, how many rooms in the house, if it was true that my father had once been kidnapped—but, after all, Stanton is as critical of the poor woman as I am, and knows her faults thoroughly: and Stanton
isn’t
anything like her. They are two quite separate and distinct persons.)

When it was pointed out to Della—now by Elvira, now by her brothers Noel and Hiram, even by her sister Matilde—that the young man was pursuing her only because she was an heiress, she simply waved the notion away as if it were completely absurd.

You don’t know Stanton as I do, she said.

STANTON WAS OF
course to die an accidental death, as the witnesses and the coroner were to attest, yet long before the accident, long before the marriage, when he was warned of the possible dangers of marrying Della Bellefleur against her family’s wishes, he waved the notion away as if it too were completely absurd. Della and I are in love, he said simply.

But the Bellefleurs—! Wasn’t he afraid of
them?

You don’t understand, he would say, smiling. Della and I are in love. We know exactly what we are doing.

Though she was nearly thirty years old, and a fully mature woman, Della was sent away over the summer to visit with some of Elvira’s relatives in another part of the state; and she and Pym were forbidden to see each other. They wrote letters faithfully but of course the letters were intercepted and opened, and their laconic, pious, possibly codified messages were read contemptuously aloud. It was noted that the words
engagement
and
marriage
were frequently used. And that they professed their
love
for each other: but always in a judicious, fairly formal manner. (The letters, at least, Della’s family said, are not obscene.) While Della was away Pym suffered two unrelated accidents, both of them minor: the brakes of his automobile failed and he ran off the road, into a thicket of scrub pine; when he went to open his bedroom window one evening the window came loose, toppling over on him, and broken glass flew everywhere—cutting him, fortunately, only superficially. In telling Stanton Pym’s story afterward, over the years, members of the Bellefleur family, with the exception, of course, of Della, usually emphasized the paradoxical fact that while Pym might very well have expected to be killed by Della’s relatives, or at least badly beaten, he
did
die, in the end, an entirely accidental death—as if his fate were predetermined, and had nothing to do with Della at all.

Della returned at the end of the summer, and the couple became engaged at once. Pym was transferred to the new bank branch at Bushkill’s Ferry, where he would be assistant manager, and he arranged to buy, with the aid of a considerable mortgage, an old but fairly attractive red-brick house with a clear view of the lake and, in the distance, Bellefleur Manor. If he encountered Bellefleur men on the street he always called out a hearty hello, and insisted upon shaking hands, no matter how coldly they eyed him; one day Lawrence, driving the handsome old gold-ornamented
phaeton
that had been his father’s, on his way to see
his
fiancée, nearly had a serious accident when his team of matched horses reared up in a panic at the noisy approach of the Morris Bullnose—and rather than apologize for the horses’ distress, Stanton Pym climbed out of his car and shook hands with Lawrence, amiably, as if it were all a lark; in fact he used the opportunity to tell Lawrence one of his jokes, which was especially inappropriate under the circumstances. (A man and a woman, on their honeymoon. The bridegroom’s horse misbehaves. The bridegroom counts three, slowly, before whipping it. Next, the bridegroom’s hound misbehaves. Again the bridegroom counts three, slowly, before whipping it. And then there is a disagreement between the bridegroom and his new bride: and slowly he begins to count,
One, two .
. . ) Stanton exploded in childish laughter, throwing his head back so hard that his straw hat flew off. He was clearly in excellent spirits. He was clearly not in the least afraid of Lawrence. Before taking his leave he invited Lawrence to come visit him and Della after the wedding—for by then, as he said, with a parting smile, “Everything will be settled.”

The wedding took place in late September, at the Methodist church, attended by only a few relatives. Della had a trust fund which paid a small but by no means contemptible dividend, and Stanton’s new position at the bank was a highly promising one, and they
seemed,
according to visitors, happy enough: at any rate Elvira soon received word that Della was pregnant. Of course she could not stay away from her daughter, no matter how she disliked her son-in-law; and then, as time passed, she did not
really
dislike him all that much . . . though of course she disapproved of him . . . disapproved, at any rate, of the idea of him. For the young man himself, even with his foolish little mustache, was well mannered and cheerful and devoted to Della. Or so it seemed. So, indeed, it
seemed
—as Elvira declared to the others. But what else have we to go on? Shouldn’t we perhaps begin to relent, since in the end we’ll forgive them anyway?