Bellefleur (85 page)

HE HAD COME
to feel a certain revulsion for the earth itself.

He had been thrown against it so carelessly, as if he were nothing more substantial than a rag doll. Knocked against the windshield of the Rolls, tossed against the door and against the stubbled cornfield—dripping blood into the August dust—crying Germaine, Germaine! My God, what have I done to you! (And, later, in the hospital in Nautauga Falls, waking delirious from the anesthesia, he had continued to call for her. Why did he think, everyone wondered, he had carried his three-year-old daughter off, to speed with him along the Innisfail road?)

A certain revulsion for the earth, and for himself. Tricked as he had been, by the men who had tampered with his car. (Yet had he been
tricked,
knowing very well that they had tampered with it?) . . . A revulsion for Gideon. Walking on the earth. Walking on the earth as one must, so long as one lived. And now he limped, now his right knee ached, he was beginning to resemble his father whom he had, he scarcely knew when, stopped loving.

Germaine
. . .
?

Far from home, in nameless towns, often with nameless women beside him, Gideon woke uttering that name.
Germaine, is it time? Is it time for all of us to die?

INSATIABLE GIDEON!

Fascinated now with the air, and with planes.
What is air, and how do we climb into it? How do we escape the earth?

Falling in love with the Rache woman, who either ignored him or returned his greeting with a curt nod. His blood going heavy and sullen with love for her: his breath going shallow.

Cessnas and Fairchilds and Beechcrafts and Stinsons and Piper Cubs and other small light planes, taxiing along the bumpy runway and lifting above the poplars and banking into the wind and rising, rising . . .

He came to love the odor of gasoline and oil. And the hush, the fear, the almost palpable fear (for the plane
might
crash in the instant its wheels touched earth) as Tzara returned with one of his student pilots. Shall I take lessons? Shall I make a fool of myself? Why the hell not!

Prowling about the grimy little airport, whistling tunelessly. Making casual conversation with the mechanics, who never flew, who had no interest in flying, but who had certain opinions—offered cautiously enough—about the Rache woman. (Her original pilot’s license, they said, had been issued in Germany.) Feeding coins to the cigarette machine and smoking those stale cigarettes; chewing, simply because his hunger leapt upon him, chocolate bars tasting of wax, from the vending machine in the manager’s office. Gideon in love, insatiable Gideon in love. When the Hawker Tempest taxied out the runway and lifted into the sky and began its slow ascent Gideon felt his soul drawn after it, thinner and thinner, until nothing remained in the cold glowering air but the wind sock’s sullen flapping noise. It was the noise, he knew, of his own heartbeat.

Insatiable Gideon Bellefleur, a gaunt shivering figure at the Invemere airport, obviously homeless.

THOUGH TZARA KNEW
the Bellefleurs were buying the airport, he never spoke of the transaction to Gideon; when he spoke, and he spoke rarely, it was only about flying, and about the weather.

He took Gideon up for the first time in a Curtiss biplane with faded yellow wings, one of his own planes. Gideon climbed into the cockpit, his eyes filling with tears behind the amber-tinted goggles. Of course his life was being changed. It would never be the same again. His heart rocked in his chest as if he were a small child, and genuinely frightened.

What is air, and how do we climb into it? How do we escape the earth?

The old plane taxied down the runway, bouncing and vibrating, and lifted, at the last minute (for the line of scrawny poplars had been rushing back with dismaying speed), and Gideon’s breath was torn from him and he exclaimed aloud with a child’s delight and terror: ah, how wonderful! how uncanny! they were in the air now! they were flying! Absurdly, he could not stop trembling. His jaws clenched, his breath came in shudders. As if it were secretly attached to the earth the pit of his stomach sank as the plane rose.

Now the earth fell away. It was only a surface, falling away. As Gideon stared in amazement the sky swung downward and opened majestically. The poplars were gone. The weedy field adjacent to the runway was gone. Now they were flying, wind-buffeted and rattling crazily, above a forest. And now above a field. In the near distance the Powhatassie River wound narrowly through winter fields, glittering snakelike as he had never seen it before. Tzara carried them above it, and it was gone, fallen away behind them. Fields, forests, rectangles of farmland, houses and barns and silos and outbuildings, grazing animals in snow-stubbled fields, ever smaller, ever more miniature as they climbed into the air: how queer, how marvelous, how uncanny! Of course it was perfectly commonplace, planes were perfectly commonplace, Gideon knew he had nothing to fear, and yet he could not stop trembling, and he could not stop a mad sunny smile from raying across his face. At last! Such joy! Such freedom! His heart soaring! His spirit rising above the earth!

This
is it, isn’t it! he shouted to Tzara, who could not, of course, hear.

The Joyful Wedding

M
any were the impassioned cross-Atlantic wires, and the tear-splotched letters in reply; many were the tasteful, modest gifts Lord Dunraven sent to his shy beloved (on Michaelmas eve an antique ring with a single pink pearl, on Christmas Day a Japanese shawl shot through with bright purples and greens, on Twelfth Night a tiny German music box inlaid with tortoiseshell and hammered silver—which poor Garnet felt she could not accept, and yet could not bring herself to return for fear of hurting her suitor’s feelings). When Lord Dunraven returned to America shortly after the New Year, and was, of course, a houseguest of the Bellefleurs, there were many weeks of letters delivered by hand to Garnet, in Mrs. Pym’s house in Bushkill’s Ferry, and weeks of ostensibly secret meetings in that house (with Della, of course, close by in an adjoining room, as a kind of chaperone), weeks of sleepless nights, increasingly impassioned pleas from Lord Dunraven’s side, gradually weakening defenses from Garnet’s: until at last, to everyone’s astonishment, not least to Lord Dunraven’s own, Garnet agreed to be his bride.

“I cannot say—I cannot
know
—if I will ever come to feel such love for you, as you declare you feel for me,” Garnet wept in his arms, “but—but—if you truly do not think me unworthy—if you
truly
do not hold me in secret contempt for having given my heart and soul to another man—and ah! how unwisely— If it’s as you declare, that my hand in marriage will make you happy, will save you from despair, then—then—then I cannot refuse you, for you are, Lord Dunraven, as everyone exclaims, the kindest of men—the most generous, the most considerate—”

Garnet’s words brought to Lord Dunraven’s ruddy face an even deeper blush, and for a moment it appeared that he did not comprehend—did not
dare
comprehend the import of what he heard. But then, whispering only, “Ah, my dear! my beloved Garnet!” he tightened his embrace and pressed upon her anxious lips a warm, passionate, husbandly kiss.

GARNET HECHT, THE
parentless servant girl, the step-granddaughter of old Jonathan Hecht, impoverished, barely educated, and, since the shame of her affair with Gideon Bellefleur and the birth of her illegitimate child, a figure of contemptuous pity in the Lake Noir area—Garnet Hecht to be Lord Dunraven’s bride! To be the bride of that finest of gentlemen, and to live on his country estate in England for the rest of her life!

It was really, as everyone said, most extraordinary.

Extraordinary, said Leah. Our unhappy little Garnet to be
Lady Dunraven.

Of course there was a great deal of excited talk. And yet, oddly, very little of it was mean-spirited. For it seemed quite clear to the Bellefleurs, even to Leah, that Garnet
had
resisted Lord Dunraven’s proposals; she
had
attempted to break off communication with him more than once; it was certainly not the case that she had seduced him, and cajoled him into marriage. She had, they felt, behaved honorably. Though Garnet was not a Bellefleur she had exhibited a Bellefleur’s integrity—it was a pity, really, that they couldn’t claim her for one of their own.

Grandmother Cornelia offered to throw the castle open for the wedding: for it looked as if, if Morna were actually going to marry Governor Horehound’s son (and
that
courtship was a stormy one), the wedding party would be held at the governor’s mansion, and not at Bellefleur Manor. And it was not to be until June, if indeed it took place at all. “You really must allow us,” grandmother Cornelia told the shy couple, “to do all we can. The renovations in the west wing are nearly complete—we’ve made over the entire third floor into a particularly lovely guest suite and of course it would make an ideal bridal suite—so spacious, so private—”

But in the end Della insisted, and of course no one dared oppose her, that the wedding party be held at
her
house. Garnet and Lord Dunraven would be married at the Anglican church in Bushkill’s Ferry, and there would be, afterward, a
small
gathering at her house. “Garnet has been, as everyone knows, the dearest of daughters to me,” Della said, her lips twisting as if she were trying not to cry, “and I will miss her—I will miss her terribly. But I want only her happiness. And this marriage has come to her from heaven. It has come to her from what must be
called
heaven.”

So the wedding and the party would be held across the lake. But the date presented a problem. For Lord Dunraven naturally wished to be married as quickly as possible (he had waited so long, so very long, for his beloved’s consent, and he was not a young man; and he was anxious, as well, to return to his homeland), but Jonathan Hecht was now critically ill, and it was feared he might die at any time. Dr. Jensen held out no hope. And, indeed, the cadaverous old man
looked
deathly. Cornelia and Della discussed the situation for hours. If they went ahead and planned the wedding for early March, as Lord Dunraven seemed to want, it was probable that Jonathan would just have died—and the wedding would have to be postponed. But if they waited for Jonathan to die—that was, of course, out of the question, in execrable taste. The most strategic thing would be to have the wedding immediately, but this too was out of the question—the haste would only provoke unseemly gossip, and ruin plans for a meaningful celebration.

In the end they scheduled the wedding for the first Saturday in March, before the start of Lent.

AND SO IT
took place on that day, without a single difficulty. There were fears that at the last minute Garnet might change her mind—for she
did
continue to worry about the propriety of the marriage, and whether she deserved Lord Dunraven’s love: but she held fast to her decision, and exchanged her wedding vows in a clear, firm voice. Never had a bride, everyone exclaimed afterward, looked so exquisitely beautiful. And never had a wedding been so joyful.

The little church was tastefully decorated with lilies, white roses, and white and pink carnations; the bridegroom, his silvery-gray hair brushed back smartly from his temples, had never looked more handsome; and the bride—ah, the bride: her slender hips and small, high breasts were shown to advantage in a simple white dress with a smocked bodice, and she wore, on her thick honey-blond hair, which was parted in the center of her head to fall in two gentle curving wings over her temples, a veil of Flemish lace that had been Della’s bridal veil. She carried herself proudly—there was no fear, as some of the less charitable Bellefleurs said, that she would slink guiltily up the aisle, or burst into tears at the crucial moment. Her skin appeared creamy, and flawless (the subtle ravages of the past two years had quite disappeared); her neck was nobly columnar; the erect grace of her carriage suggested that she
was,
even at this time, Lady Dunraven. The only testimony of her nervousness was the trembling of her bridal bouquet of white and pink carnations.

Quite apart from the beauty of the bride, and the love that showed so clearly on the bridegroom’s face, the wedding was remarkable for another reason: not only had old Jonathan Hecht managed not to die and disrupt the plans, he had, through what must have been a preternatural effort, forced himself up out of his sickbed, and, in the wheelchair he had not been able to use for five or six years, he attended the wedding—and gave the bride away.

“What a feat! What a surprise!” grandfather Noel said, gripping the old man’s arm afterward. “You go your own way, don’t you, eh?—like all of us!”

Noel was the liveliest, and the loudest, of the wedding guests. He declared he didn’t mind making a fool of himself, and went about kissing the women, and insisting upon dancing with the bride, almost as if she were his daughter. “Lady Dunraven, is it? Lady Dunraven? Yes? Right?” he said, winking, and hugging the blushing young woman until Cornelia came to take him away. “You go your own way like all of us! I see that now! I’m beginning to see that now!” he crowed.

And so Garnet and Lord Dunraven were wed at last, and soon sailed for England, where they were to live out the rest of their lives in contentment: for the joyful wedding
did
prognosticate a joyful marriage. The following January they were to send a wire, never received, announcing the birth of a son; but in general, after they left for England, communications between them and the Bellefleurs were but feebly maintained. “It’s true, it’s true,” Della said with a sad smile, “we all must go our own way.”

AND YET:

A scant two days before the wedding Garnet sought out her lover Gideon, and spoke passionately with him, in secret, for three-quarters of an hour.