The Tutor.

Somewhat reluctantly, yet not with the pouty self-pitying resistance her somber face seemed to declare (for though she didn't love him she didn't know she didn't love him, not knowing at that time what love should have been; and anyway since the burning of Johnny Doan on Germaine's first birthday she had such terrifying nightmares, she yearned to escape the castle), Christabel consented, meekly enough, to be wed to Edgar Holleran von Schaff III, the great-great-great-great-grandson of the Revolutionary hero Baron von Schaff. Edgar was a widower with two children, a wealthy man who owned, among other things, a chain of newspapers throughout the state. The first Mrs. von Schaff was the daughter of Bertram Lund, a U.S. Senator for many years; she had died while still in her twenties, in a tragic hunting accident at Silver Lake. Though Edgar's puffy, ruddy, creased moonish face was that of a man of middle age, he was in fact only thirty-eight years old. And he adored, as he frequently said, both in person and by hand-delivered letter, dear little Christabel.

Edgar had inherited, along with the newspapers, beautiful Schaff Hall at Silver Lake, some fifty miles from Bellefleur Manor, and the original 25,000 acres of fertile valley land deeded Baron von Schaff by the state, as payment for his services in the Revolutionary War. (The baron-whose nobility was questioned only by the envious-had been an officer in the Prussian Army, who emigrated to America at the request of General George Washington in order to train soldiers at Valley Forge. He later became major general and inspector general of the United States Army, where he served from 1777 to 1784. After the Revolution he became, like a number of other German professionals, a United States citizen; and in addition to the land given him in the Nautauga Valley he owned 30,000 acres in Virginia and 5,000 in eastern New Jersey-not the grandest of empires, but a highly respectable one.) Schaff Hall, a Greek revival mansion with some twenty-five rooms, and six Doric columns, and a superb view of Silver Lake, was erected by the baron's grandson, a contemporary of Raphael Bellefleur's, in 1850; it was said that forty yoke of oxen were required to haul the enormous limestone slab on the front portico. But on her first visit to Schaff Hall Christabel, gnawing at her thumb, was not impressed. The gilded wooden eagle over the front door looked, she said, as if termites had riddled it through, and the house wasn't anywhere near as big as Bellefleur Manor. "Don't be silly," Leah said, squeezing her daughter's hand, hard, in a little spasm of affection. "Don't be deceived."

There were Bellefleurs, among them Della, who, not having seen Christabel for a while, were appalled that so young a child was even being considered for matrimony; but when they did see her-tall, lithe, self-possessed (though that was only an aspect of her terror), with her small shapely breasts and her uplifted chin-they were forced to agree, with Leah and Cornelia, that she was certainly mature enough to be wed. After all, many Bellefleur brides had been very young, and in every case-in nearly every case-the matches were excellent ones.

How strange, for Bromwell, grandmother Della said, Christabel's more than a head taller than he is, and while he looks like a little boy, still, no more than ten, she looks like a young woman of eighteen . . . ! Leah stared at her mother for several seconds, frowning. But why, Mamma, she said finally, why should it be strange for Bromwell? I don't understand you. . . . she had forgotten that Christabel and Bromwell were twins.

Christabel was required to meet with Edgar only three times, and always, to her relief, in the presence of others. Arrangements between the two families were made: papers signed, contracts sealed. The fuss she loathed took place somewhere beyond her exact awareness, which pleased her, though she came briefly alive at her bridal shower, cutting a wonderful six-tier angel food cake Edna had baked, with the special whipped frosting, vanilla threaded with apricot, Christabel loved: what pleasure it was, she thought suddenly, cutting cake for her girl cousins and friends . . . ! She had wished the lively little party, held in the remodeled Ivory Room, would never end.

Some weeks later she was married, snugly buttoned into great-great-grandmother Violet's wedding dress, with its magnificent long train and its hundreds of pearls and the lace veil that was, even to Christabel's skeptical eye, beautiful (though, clowning beforehand with her maids of honor, she draped it over her head and sucked it against her mouth and nose, claiming she couldn't breathe). Though "Edgar"-she did not call him that, did not call him anything, thought frequently of him as if him were a nebulous shapeless not exactly malevolent presence-though "Edgar" accompanied her back from the altar of the Lutheran church, his hand gripping hers somewhat less firmly than Leah had gripped it that morning, she was not required to speak with him, or even to acknowledge him in any particular, any detailed way. And the wedding party was a merry one. And the farewell, afterward, on the front walk of the manor, was very moving: hoydenish cynical Christabel actually burst into tears . . . !

Farewell, farewell. She hugged and kissed them all, one by one. Her mother, looking radiantly beautiful in a turquoise gown; her father, stooping to kiss her, and to accept her kiss; little Germaine in her white flower-girl dress (which, though somewhat stained, was still adorable); the new baby Cassandra, held wriggling and cooing in Lissa's arms; grandmother Cornelia in a curly new wig; grandfather Noel; grandmother Della, whose wrinkled prune of a face was wet with sudden, unacknowledged tears; uncle Hiram; cousin Vernon, whose thin-lipped melancholy grin made her cry all the more; aunt Lily; uncle Ewan; her cousins Vida and Albert and Raphael and Morna and Jasper and Louis and . . . And there was little Bromwell, blinking behind his glasses, extending a hand to her for a formal handshake . . . ! And Garth, and pretty Little Goldie; and aunt Aveline and uncle Denton; and Edna; and Lissa; and "the old man from the flood" who had been brought outside by great-grandmother Elvira; and of course great-grandmother Elvira herself, who had had her white hair puffed out for the occasion in a kind of pompadour, and whose frail fingers were surprisingly strong, gripping Christabel's wrist. (Since his rescue, the "old man from the flood"-who remained nameless because he could not recall his name, and the Bellefleurs were reluctant to assign him one since, as they supposed, they hadn't the right, and his own people would soon be stepping forward to claim him-had improved considerably, and was no longer in any danger, and capable, even, of playing games with the children (mainly Chinese checkers and Old Maid) and helping with little household tasks, when he felt strong enough. Dr. Jensen had given him injections of vitamin C and left behind a supply of iron tablets, and great-grandmother Elvira prepared for him, in the kitchen, allowing no one else to help, meals laced with special herbs, which were evidently quite beneficial, since the old man-who was a very old man, possibly older than Elvira-seemed to be gaining strength steadily. He was soft-spoken and gentle, and slept often, and caused no one any trouble. Though Elvira fussed in the kitchen, it was always a maid who brought the old man his meal, and Elvira did no more than peek in from time to time, from the doorway, making no response to the old man's hopeful, rather abashed, and perplexed greeting, when he was awake. Sometimes she complained of him, that nuisance, that old fool, but she was, in fact, the only person who remembered him from day to day.) And last of all tearful Christabel, squatting impulsively, so that her silk stockings broke out in a half-dozen runs and ladders, said farewell to the cats: to great-grandmother Elvira's Minerva, and to CeCi and Dexter-Margaret and George and Charley and Misty and Miranda and Wallace and Roo . . . and Troilus and Buddy and Muffin and Tristram and Yassou . . . and Mahalaleel, who bumped his large head against her as if nudging her, purring deep in his throat, pausing to lick, with his sandpaperish tongue that was so wet and so ticklish, her stockinged knee: beautiful haughty Mahalaleel himself, the ruff about his head plumped out as if one of the children had just been brushing him, his frosted bluish-gray coat gleaming in the sun. Christabel backed away, stumbling in her high heels, weeping, "I'll never see you again! If I come back everything will be different! I'll never see you again like this. . . ."

They called her a silly little goose, and Edgar took her arm, and helped her into the gleaming black Mercedes, which, evidently, he was going to drive himself.

THOUGH THE BARON became a U.S. citizen in 1784 it was clear that he, and his progeny, retained strong Teutonic memories. The Schaff collection, old Mrs. Schaff told Christabel in a whisper, was a national treasure-curious medieval weapons and shields; ancient panels; tapestries more threadbare than those at Bellefleur Manor; sixteenth-century Flemish stonewear; medieval and sixteenth-century stained glass panels; a seventeenth-century German bronze nest of weights; leather-bound books, whole walls of them, in German; etchings, engravings, mezzotints; and of course dark, time-stained oil paintings, one of which-Folly, Cupid, Leda, and Silenus, attributed to van Miereveld-reminded homesick Christabel of a large painting that had been hanging for years on the second-floor landing of the east wing. Entire walls were muffled in the skins of animals. Fireplaces were so festooned with furbelows and brass that they could not be used. In every room, but concentrated in the Main Hall, were bald eagles-wooden, pewter, wrought-iron, brass-some with arrows clutched in their talons. It was said that the baron and his sons had collected hundreds of Indian scalps (properly tanned and treated, of course), but these were not in evidence.

Old Mrs. Schaff, a very short, cork-shaped woman, rose each morning at 6:30. She bathed, aided by a servant; read aloud from the Bible; came downstairs promptly at 7:30 to lead the household staff in prayers; breakfasted; then went upstairs again for a morning of letter writing, sewing, mending, and further reading in the Bible. The main meal of the day, to Christabel's amazement, was served at 2:00 P.M. It was a formal occasion though only Edgar, Christabel, and Mrs. Schaff ordinarily dined. (The kitchen, Mrs. Schaff pointedly told her new daughter-in-law, was only for servants. It was in the basement. Food was prepared there by persons Christabel never saw, and sent up by dumb waiter to the butler's pantry above.) Edgar's two little boys dined at noon and then again at 5:30, upstairs in the nursery, with their tutor. The very first morning after her arrival at Schaff Hall, Christabel, in a bright-flowered frock, with a yellow scarf tied about her head, passed by the nursery just to peer inside . . . and saw, to her surprise, and very much to her interest, the man who must have been the boys' tutor: he was standing at an opened window, glasses in one hand, rubbing the bridge of his nose and muttering to himself. He was no age Christabel could determine. His ash-blond hair was ill-cut, falling unevenly across his collar; his jaw, clean-shaven, was strong but almost too square; the leather patch on the right elbow of his tweed jacket was hanging loose. He was quite solidly built, like a young ox, and more resembled a farmer's son than a tutor said to have been educated abroad, in England and Germany, and to have been employed by the very best families in the East.

Something about his stance, his air of lassitude and melancholy, touched Christabel to the heart. She stared, standing in the doorway, and halfway thought he looked familiar. That agreeably homely profile, those clumsily broad shoulders that made his coat strain into wrinkles across the back . . .

He turned, suddenly, and drew in his breath at the sight of her.

It was Demuth Hodge . . . !

Passion.

It was as a consequence of an astonishing outburst of passion-remarkable in one so frail, and so customarily meek-that Garnet Hecht encountered Lord Dunraven, who was to bring so much guilt-ridden torment into her life.

She had arranged (her heart sinking at his weary politeness) to see her lover once again, after so many months of mutual renunciation: she did not like to think that she nearly pleaded with him, her tear-brimmed eyes if not her words begging O Gideon you must know how I love you, I have always loved you, I continue to love you despite the promise we made never again to see each other, the promise we made in order not to hurt Leah and your children. . . . (And had she not behaved nobly, surrendering her baby girl to the castle, to the Bellefleurs, guessing that this was the baby's father's unarticulated wish? How nobly, with what heartrending pain, only she herself knew. . . . Even good Mrs. Pym, who, alone among the Bellefleurs seemed to know, without having been told, of her liaison with Gideon, could not have guessed (for Garnet kept her sobbing to herself, and sometimes, in the pantry or the kitchen, thrust her fingers in her mouth to keep from moaning aloud at the double loss of her lover and her baby) at the depth of her suffering. Della frequently touched Garnet's shoulder and smiled sadly and spoke of her own terrible bereavement, at the hands of her own people, when she had been a young bride. "We must tell ourselves, Garnet-This too will pass," Della said. "Every morning, every midday, every evening, when silly hopeful persons say their prayers, like children, we must say, calmly and clearly-This too will pass. For it will, my dear! Never doubt but that it will!") While accompanying Mrs. Pym on a weeklong visit to the castle, shortly after the surprising occasion of Miss Christabel's marriage to Edgar Holleran von Schaff III, Garnet was able to draw aside (discreetly, though she trembled violently that they might be discovered even in so innocent a place as the nursery, where she was "visiting with" Cassandra) her lover Gideon; and to arrange for a secret meeting very late on the following night. "I will make no demands of you," she whispered. "But we must meet. One final time." Gideon, dressed for the outdoors, his dark beard newly trimmed (but it was, now, Garnet saw with a pang of love, threaded with gray-silver-gray), his somewhat prominent eyes darting quickly about behind her (touching upon, and veering off, the beautiful Cassandra napping on her stomach in the cradle), seemed at first incapable of speaking. He opened his mouth-smiled-the smile thinned-he blinked rapidly-cleared his throat-looked her full in the face-and, wincing, drew back an inch or two, as if involuntarily. She could see that, for Gideon as well as herself, even so casual a meeting was painful: it was likely that he suffered as she did, though of course he would never speak of such things. "I know, I know, this violates our promise," Garnet said quickly, half feeling pity for him (for herself, she had long abrogated pity, as unworthy of one who was loved by, and had borne a child for, Gideon Bellefleur), "but you must understand that I am desperate . . . I am so lonely . . . I'm afraid that something terrible will happen to me. . . . Ah, it was good, really, though your wife could not have known, that she came to take my baby away from me!" Garnet whispered.

"Don't talk like that, don't say such foolish things," Gideon said. "If you say them they are likely to become-"

She touched her fingers daringly to his lips. "Then we'll meet? Tomorrow? And you won't despise me? And you will come?"

He seized her hand and, hesitating a moment, kissed it; or anyway pressed it to his cold lips. Garnet was to feel the imprint of those lips against her hand (but it was the back of her hand, for he had, oddly, turned it at the very last instant) for many hours. Shamelessly, like a young girl new to love, and delirious with its promise, she had even kissed her own hand-hoping her foolishness would go unobserved.

"He does love me," she murmured aloud to her wan, indistinct reflection, as she plaited her hair for bed that night. "But his love makes our predicament all the more tragic. . . ."

AND SO THEY met, the following night. In the unused room on the third floor of the east wing where, so very long ago, in another lifetime, Garnet had gone, at Mrs. Pym's suggestion, to bring poor Gideon some nourishment. It was in the doorway of that room, in the shadowy corridor outside the room, that Garnet, staring as Gideon Bellefleur tore with ravenous appetite at the meat she had brought him, that she fell-plunged-was thrown, violently-in love. She had wanted to cry aloud O Gideon I love you, you must know, you cannot not know. . . . Perhaps (she sometimes wondered, reliving that night) she had cried aloud. . . .

Meeting there had been Garnet's idea. But if it struck her lover as foolishly sentimental, he gave no indication. (But then Gideon was so polite. So impassively courteous. Garnet had once overheard, out in the garden, one humid August afternoon, Leah herself shouting at him-What do you mean, showing that frosty insupportable gentlemanliness to me, to your own wife, who knows you inside and out!) Instead he merely nodded, and repeated the time she had said-1:00 A.M.-in a hurried and preoccupied manner.

Well before 1:00 A.M. Garnet slipped away, and climbed the drafty stairs to the third floor, daring only a small candle (whose flame flickered wildly, cupped behind her hand), for fear of being discovered. Bellefleur Manor, even during the day, was intimidating: there were corridors, and corners, and dark little niches, that looked as if no one ever visited them; and of course the sillier women, and even some of the men, among the domestic staff, freely complained of ghosts. But Garnet did not believe in ghosts. She found it difficult, at times, to believe in flesh-and-blood people-even in herself-certainly in the baby to whom she had given birth. . . . There were only the cruel stretch marks on her abdomen and a certain oversensitivity about her breasts, even after many months, to remind her of the arduous physical reality of her motherhood.

In preparation for the many houseguests who were to have stayed at Bellefleur Manor, for great-grandmother Elvira's birthday celebration, all the rooms had been cleaned; and in many-in this room, for instance-furniture had been reupholstered and new carpets laid. So Garnet's first impression was one of pleased surprise. The really quite filthy carpet upon which Gideon had slept was gone, and in its place lay what appeared to be an attractive thick-piled rug. There were chairs-a bureau-a large mirror-several small tables, inlaid with marble-and of course a bed-a double bed-a canopied bed with high pillows and a thick crimson cover. Blushing, Garnet saw by the flickering light (and perhaps she saw inaccurately, for the candle did flicker) a most embarrassing tapestry hanging just to the right of the bed: it showed a scantily clad couple, the woman as well as the man quite full-bodied, and vigorous, and impatient to make love, being surprised in a boudoir by-could it be?-a lascivious little Cupid leading, down a staircase, a horse-a horse with outlandish long eyelashes and a queer human expression. The lovers gaped with surprise: and indeed who would not have been surprised?

Garnet was staring at this strange tapestry (she could not decide if it was obscene, or merely playful; or both; but in any case it should be taken down and stored at the very back of a closet) when she heard a sound in the corridor. For some reason (had she doubted, even then, her lover's truthfulness?) her first thought was that someone other than Gideon was there. One or two of the male servants had expressed an interest in her-an interest, of course, fervently rebuffed-and there were tales of poor Hiram's sleepwalking, which had evidently flared up again after some months of quiescence; and innumerable cats, some of them quite large, roamed the castle freely at night. So she stood, cringing, the little candle cupped in her hand, a young woman who-despite her motherhood, despite her passion-looked hardly more than a child, staring at the empty doorway as if she had no idea who might appear.

And then of course Gideon did arrive, with a flashlight in hand-entering the room boldly, yet without haste. He murmured a greeting and reached out to take her hand (ah, how awkward she was!-Garnet jerked away because of the candle she was holding, not wanting it to be upset, and then of course it was upset; and her lover, swearing, had to scramble for it across the rug), and managed at last to kiss her on the forehead. Yet something was wrong. Garnet felt it, she knew, unmistakably.

Nevertheless she spoke, gripping his arm. She spoke, too rapidly, of her love for him, which had not ebbed, which had in fact increased-though, yes, she knew they had promised never to say such things again-never to torment themselves. But she had to break her vow: her life was so empty, so miserable, so futile. It was all the more intolerable, she told him, that his wife (who meant well-of course Leah always meant well) chattered about finding a "suitable" husband for her, and had even been making inquiries about eligible bachelors and widowers in the area. Couldn't he speak-discreetly, of course-to Leah? Didn't Leah realize how such remarks wounded Garnet? Didn't he realize? But that wasn't the primary cause of her unhappiness, as he must know. Even the surrender of Cassandra-which had nearly broken her heart-wasn't the primary cause.

And then, suddenly, desperately, she threw herself into his arms.

Gideon held her, rather awkwardly. He patted her back, he murmured words she could not interpret; he behaved, in short, exactly as Gideon Bellefleur-as nearly any Bellefleur, for that matter-might have behaved if, in public, quite suddenly, unpredictably, a grieving stranger had fairly collapsed in his arms.

Sobs wracked her body. She knew-knew from the very moment he entered the room, really-that he no longer loved her. (And the hairsbreadth of a thought which she hadn't quite had, about the handsome big bed-how that would return to haunt her, poor humiliated Garnet Hecht!) Still she could not keep herself from saying, "O I love you, I can't stop loving you, you are a prince among men, I can't stop loving you-please, Gideon-please don't abandon me! Haven't I given up my baby girl for you, for your sake-Haven't I doomed myself to a life of sorrow, knowing that my child will grow up apart from me-and even if she knows I am her mother, still-"

Gideon stepped back from her, blinking. He asked her to repeat what she had said.

"About Cassandra? Why, I-I-"

"You gave her up for me?" Gideon asked, baffled. "But what do you mean?-for me?"

"I-I naturally thought-"

"Leah told me that you had begged her to take the child: that you didn't want her: that the baby would interfere with your chances of getting married. What do you mean, now, by saying that you gave her up for me?"

He stared at her with such incredulity, with such an air of-of unloving alarm-that Garnet came close to swooning. She stammered, "I thought-I only thought-Leah and Hiram came to visit Mrs. Pym, you see, and-and- And somehow it came about- I don't remember clearly- I don't remember most things clearly, now- O Gideon I had thought you-you were behind it-sending them-her-to bring your own child back-to rear her as a Bellefleur-of course without letting Leah know- I had thought," Garnet whispered, "that it might even have been a test of-of-a test of my love for you-"

Gideon stepped back. He exhaled loudly-puffed out his cheeks and extended his lower lip and blew upward, so that his hair was stirred-in a gesture Ewan frequently made, to show half-amused disgust and bewilderment. ". . . but no not really," he muttered.

"Gideon?" Garnet cried, reaching for him, stumbling toward him, "do you mean-do you mean-you didn't- As Cassandra's father you didn't especially want her-?"

He stepped back again, eluding her. As her fingers groped for his sleeve he brushed them half-consciously away. For a long moment he appeared unable to speak. A vein pulsed in his forehead, and another in his throat. ". . . so it was Leah . . . Leah's idea . . . she knows . . . must know . . . but why did she do it . . . to spite me, or . . . to spite you. . . . Or is there another reason . . ."

"Gideon," Garnet said, in a lower voice, "please tell me: you didn't ask her to bring the child back? You don't, even now, especially want her? As Cassandra's father you don't especially want her-?"

It was at this point that, quite suddenly, in a voice that hardly resembled his, Gideon said something that was to be as inexplicable-indeed, as unfathomable-in his own imagination as in Garnet's, and to cause him, in secret, great torment: he heard himself say sardonically, "Am I the father?"

For a long moment Garnet simply stared at him. She could not comprehend his words. Slowly, as if dazed, she brushed her damp hair out of her eyes-tried to speak-stood swaying-staring at him. It was only when his face contorted with shame, and guilt, and immediate sorrow, that she realized the terrible thing he had said. He exclaimed, "Oh, Garnet of course I didn't mean-" but already she had turned, and was running out of the room, her long hair streaming behind her.

He would have pursued her at once, and might have caught her, but in Garnet's shock she dropped the candle; and once again he had to scramble after it as it rolled, not yet entirely quenched, beneath the bed. "Dear fucking God, why is this happening," Gideon half-sobbed, his shoulder striking the bedframe (for he was a large man, and could not comfortably maneuver in that cramped space), "why am I plagued as I am, who is playing this vile trick, whom should I murder. . . . Jesus fucking God!" he exclaimed, at last catching hold of the candle, and retrieving it. And with great passion he spat on the wick, though the meager flame had at last died. ". . . should have let it go," he murmured, "should have let everything go up in flames. . . ."

So Garnet fled, in a paroxysm of shame, hardly knowing what she did, which turn in the corridor to take, which stairway to descend. She fled, too stupefied even to weep, and somehow found herself in an unheated back hallway, and then at a door, throwing herself against a door, as dogs began to yip in a startled chorus. Gathering her cloak about her she ran across the lawn. Moonlight illuminated the long hill that dipped to the lake-illuminated the hill and not the surrounding woods-so that she had only one way to run. Now barefoot, her hair streaming, the skirt of her pretty silken gown beginning to rip, she ran, her eyes open and fixed. Somehow the cloak was torn off her shoulders-torn off and flung away. Still she ran, oblivious of her surroundings, knowing only that she must run, to flee the horror behind her, and to eradicate herself in the dark murmurous lake before her. Senseless words careened about her head: O Gideon I love you, I cannot live without you, I have always loved you and I will always love you- Please forgive me- (An angel, transfixed by suffering! A crucifixion, Lord Dunraven was to think, afterward, in her lovely face! But how terrifying a sight she was, on that night, running like a madwoman, only partly clad, to drown herself in the frigid March waters of that ugliest of lakes!) So Garnet fled; and would surely have drowned herself. Except, through the unlikeliest of coincidences (though not, upon reflection, any less likely, Lord Dunraven reasoned, than many another coincidence he had experienced in his lifetime, or had heard of in others' lives) there turned up the Bellefleur drive at that moment a carriage drawn by two superbly-matched teams of horses, carrying Eustace Beckett, Lord Dunraven, a distant relative of grandmother Cornelia's who had been invited, originally, for great-grandmother Elvira's birthday, but who had had regretfully to decline, though saying (with a graciousness that struck Cornelia as kindly rather than sincere) that he would like to visit his American cousin another time. A telegram announcing his arrival had been sent from New York, but had not, evidently, been delivered, for no one awaited him at the manor. As the carriage turned up the drive, and passed by the gate house, Lord Dunraven saw, to his astonishment, a ghostly figure running down the long, long hill-running barefoot, despite the cold-her hair flying behind her-her arms outstretched-and though the vision was a most alarming one (for Garnet did resemble a madwoman) Lord Dunraven had the presence of mind, and the courage, to shout for the driver to stop at once; and he leapt down; and pursued the girl to the very edge of the lake where, since his cries had made no impression upon her, he was forced to seize her bare arm, to prevent her from plunging in the water.

"No, no-you must not- My poor girl, you must not-" Lord Dunraven cried, out of breath. The girl tried to struggle free. She clawed at him, even slashed at him-quite harmlessly, as it turned out-with her teeth, and writhed with such demonic violence that her gown was torn nearly off her back, exposing the bare flesh. "I say you must not," Lord Dunraven grunted, holding her, at last, still, in the moment before she sank into blessed unconsciousness.

Another Carriage . . .

Another carriage, piled high with trunks, unceremoniously jammed with people, carried her away: so Jean-Pierre theorized, though in fact he could not see her: though he saw, quite clearly, her bewigged and vacant-eyed father.

The next day, outside a tavern, he joined a regiment bound for Fort Ticonderoga; and the night before leaving he dreamt, not of the girl, but of the ugly prison-castle his family inhabited for centuries, in the north of France: its monstrous walls eighty-five feet high and seven feet thick, the shallow green-scummed water of the moat giving off a most unpleasant stink.

Ticonderoga, Lake Champlain, Crown Point. . . . He left for the north without seeing a map. Henceforth he would not meet his fate passively: he would forge it.

The Noir Vulture.

It was on a windless June day of heart-stopping beauty (only a very few clouds, diaphanous, subtle as milkweed fluff, were brushed against the china-blue sky) that Vernon Bellefleur, who had despaired for more than twenty years of being a poet (a genuine poet, in his own terms: everyone else referred to him, glibly, if not contemptuously, as The Poet), became, at last, quite suddenly, through an experience of obscene horror, a poet. And so he was to remain, for the rest of his exceptionally long life.

"A man's life of any worth," Vernon often intoned, "is a continual allegory. . . ."

But what is the nature, precisely, of this allegory? Are all men's lives allegorical, or only the few, the extraordinary few?

He liked to read to The People. To his family's field hands, or mill hands, good simple unquestioning sturdy folk, about whom the phrase the salt of the earth was not inappropriate: he liked to stand before them in his jacket that was too tight in the armpits, and buttoned crookedly, part of his beard caught up in the gay red scarf he knotted about his neck for such occasions, his voice rising with a dramatic intensity that stirred his listeners to a sympathy so profound it expressed itself in spasms of mirth. (But were their lives allegorical, their simple laborers' lives . . . ? Or might they require the transcendental services of the poet, of poesy, to transform them . . . ?) At any rate he read, though his knees trembled with the audacity of his undertaking (for he read out in the fields, standing atop a wagon; or on a window ledge in the Fort Hanna mill; even in crowded taverns on Friday evenings, where the tavern keeper, knowing he was a Bellefleur, commanded a modicum of attention for him), and tears jerked in the corners of his eyes, he read until his throat was hoarse, until his head reeled with exhaustion, until, glancing up, he saw that most of his audience had drifted away-for perhaps his thirty-eight-line sonnets on "Lara" were too painfully candid for them, or they found too difficult, too demanding, the words of certain other poets, lifelong heroes of Vernon's, whom he also read: Ah! who can e'er forget so fair a being?

Who can forget her half retiring sweets?

God! she is like a milk-white lamb that bleats For God's protection. Surely the All-seeing, Who joys to see us with his gifts agreeing, Will never give him pinions, who intreats Such innocence to ruin,-who vilely cheats A dove-like bosom. In truth there is no freeing One's thoughts from such a beauty; when I hear A lay that once I saw her hand awake, Her form seems floating palpable, and near; Had I e'er seen her from an arbour take A dewy flower, oft would that hand appear And o'er my eyes the trembling moisture shake. . . .

Because he took little heed of such things, Vernon scarcely knew his own age. He was, he supposed, in his early thirties at the time of the great shock-the sight, to be repeated continuously in his mind's eye, whether he woke or slept, of an infant borne aloft in the talons of a gigantic vulturelike bird, and partly dismembered, and even devoured, in midair, before his helpless gaze; the last time anyone in the family (and that person had been Leah) thought to celebrate his birthday was a considerable number of years before, and he had been twenty-seven or twenty-eight at the time, he couldn't quite recall. Vernon will never grow up, Hiram once said, not caring that he spoke-with such unpaternal disdain!-within earshot of his son. But Vernon halfway thought that he had always been grownup. He hadn't had a childhood, had he?-hadn't it come to an abrupt, cruel end? But perhaps since his mother had abandoned him to the Bellefleurs, so many, many years ago, his childhood had been blighted from the start. He had been, he sometimes thought (though he didn't write about such sentiments because he believed poetry must be rhapsodic and hymnal and "beautiful"), a kind of changeling. . . . For though he was, by heredity, a Bellefleur, in his soul he most emphatically was not a Bellefleur.

So he frequently quarreled, not only with his father but with his uncle Noel and his aunt Cornelia, and his cousins Ewan and Gideon whom he had always, since boyhood, feared; for he knew himself an aspect of God, a fragment of God's consciousness, whose bodily form as well as his family identity was irrelevant. Once swaggering bullnecked Ewan asked him (in somewhat coarser language) if he had ever made love-"With a woman, that is"-and stared at him blandly, as if daring Vernon even to sense the insult of his words. Vernon's skin flared and prickled hotly, but he managed to reply, in his usual gentle voice, No, no, he hadn't, he supposed he had not, in the usual sense of the words.

"What other sense is there?" Ewan wanted to know.

He ignored such crudities, and forgave them, for he was, he supposed, something of a clownish figure; and anyway what choice had he? Sometimes in his wanderings back in the foothills, miles from home, when the towers of the castle were barely visible at the horizon, he allowed himself to think, warmly, that his poetry would someday be the means of his escape from those terrible soulless people-it would be the means of his power-his fame-his revenge. Ah, if he could only discover the characteristica universalis-the exact and universal language lodged deep in the human soul-what profound truths he would utter! Like Icarus he would construct wings to carry him free of this vast, beautiful, gloomy, overpowering corner of the world (which felt so often, in the mountains especially, or along the lakeshore, like an edge of the world); unlike Icarus he would escape, and live in triumph, for his wings would be the inviolable wings of poetry. At such times his heart beat painfully, and he yearned to seize hold of someone-anyone-even a stranger-and attempt to explain the rapture that swelled in his breast-which must be, he thought, like the rapture Christ experienced-Christ who yearned only to be the Saviour of pitiful fallen mankind, of the very people who failed to hear His words. Like a man trapped in a tomb, whose voice is not strong enough to penetrate the dense rock that has been rolled up against it, he yearned to explain himself, yet lacked the art.

Instead he stumbled, he stuttered, he groped, he annoyed and exasperated and embarrassed and bored other people, and made (ah, how frequently!) a contemptible fool of himself. One by one the children outgrew him. For a while each loved him-loved him very much-sought him out to tell little secrets to, to complain of the other adults' indifference or cruelty; gave him presents; climbed on his lap, kissed his prickly cheek, teased, even taunted him, played little tricks on him; but loved him. One by one, Yolande (sweet, pretty, strong-willed Yolande, who had broken his heart by running away without leaving, as he had truly thought she would, a message for him), Vida, Morna, Jasper, Albert, Bromwell, Christabel. . . . Garth had never liked him. Garth had always been faintly contemptuous of him, making rude razzing noises during lessons or during Vernon's readings. There was dreamy gentle dark-eyed Raphael, with his long pale slender hands, his white, almost clammish skin, Raphael who was so shy he had taken to avoiding, in recent years, not only his rowdy brothers and cousins and their friends, but Vernon himself. For a while Vernon and Raphael had been quite close. Vernon had liked to think of the boy as his son, a changeling of sorts, for wasn't it improbable-ludicrous-that beefy beery Ewan should be the boy's father? He had taken Raphael on hikes with him, he had shared with him certain beautiful moments- For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, . . .

And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things . . .

-yet for some reason, when Raphael was about eleven years old, they became estranged. Of course it was all on the boy's side: Vernon had never ceased loving him. But the boy rose early and slipped away before breakfast, and spent all his time at the pond north of the cemetery (Mink Pond, it was called, though another pond, now dried up, had once been called Mink Pond), and when Vernon hiked out there to be with him he could feel how unwelcome he was: how, as he approached the pond's marshy reedy willow-choked bank, and caught sight of the boy lying stomach-down on his raft, staring into the water, he was clumsily violating the child's privacy, the child's very soul. It was, he thought, sadly, like tramping heedlessly on a bird's wing . . . Raphael lingered about the pond until after sunset, and then only reluctantly came home; even in the rain he played there; even on uncomfortably cold days. (What does he do for so many hours, Lily asked in exasperation, wondering if the boy needed a doctor's care, or simply a good spanking, and Vernon said, somewhat arrogantly, What do any of us do-?) But he had lost Raphael and would never reclaim him. Now there was only Germaine: Germaine, that sturdy red-cheeked beauty with the amazing, uncanny eyes, and Garnet's baby Cassandra, who was of course far too young, still, to appreciate Vernon's devotion. And someday, he supposed, he would lose Germaine and Cassandra too.

And then there was Leah.

Leah-"Lara"-his Muse-his inspiration-his folly.

Ewan had asked rudely if Vernon had ever performed the act of love with a woman; he had not asked if Vernon had ever loved a woman. Surely there was an important distinction. He had fallen in love with Gideon's young wife on the very day of the wedding, at the wedding party, as he gazed with longing at the dancers-at his cousin Gideon and Gideon's bride-magnificent Leah Pym-Leah from across the lake-Della Pym's daughter-one of the "poor" Bellefleurs. (Poor out of pride, it was said. For Della could certainly have lived in the castle had she wished.) He had loved her then and had been, over the years, content to love her at arm's length, like a courtier of old, reading in her presence (though not, alas, always with her attentive ear) poems of longing, his own and others', With how sad steps O moon, and "Greensleeves," and the tender, clumsy, assonance-heavy "Lara" sonnets; eager to do errands for her, to mind the children, to listen sympathetically as she complained of Cornelia's tyranny. But Leah was, in recent months, not always an inspiration. The gross but marvelous physicality of her pregnancy had somewhat unnerved him-he had discovered, then, that Leah in his imagination was sometimes lovelier than Leah in the flesh-but the Leah of the present was more extreme. Her glittering eyes disturbed him, and her fingers smudged with newsprint (for she read, each morning at breakfast, several papers), and her quick wit, her manner of addressing Hiram, even in Vernon's presence, in a language so studded with private allusions and financial terms and abbreviations of one kind or another that it constituted, nearly, a code-a code poor Vernon could not hope to decipher, and which caused him pain. And she was frequently imperious. Hoarse-voiced, and then shrill. Sending back the tea things because a single cup was cracked, or the tea wasn't hot enough, or there was an indentation-"Suspiciously like a thumbnail!"-in the icing on a piece of coffee cake. (Isn't she terrible, the servants whispered, sometimes in tears. Isn't she full of herself! And such was their distress that they frequently spoke in voices loud enough for Vernon to hear.) Of course she was still beautiful. She would always be, Vernon knew, beautiful. Despite the fact that the soft plump placidity of her face had thinned slightly so that near-invisible lines showed about her eyes, ghostlines, really, not seriously imprinted in the flesh, and visible only in harsh bright sunlight. . . . (She had lost a considerable amount of weight after her pregnancy, and continued to lose it. For she was always rushing from place to place-the state capitol, Vanderpoel, the Falls, Port Oriskany, Derby, Yewville, Powhatassie, even New York City-and even at home she rarely relaxed, as she had in the old days, in the walled garden or Violet's boudoir. Even sprawled exhausted in a chair she was thinking, thinking, planning, plotting, her mind turning and turning about like a windmill blade, giving off a nearly palpable heat. Vernon had actually glimpsed her, once, through the partly open door of Raphael's study, talking over two telephones, a receiver tightly couched against each of her hunched shoulders!) But Leah would always be a beautiful woman, Vernon told himself, sighing a lover's sigh of resignation, and he would always love her; and she would always belong to another man.

HE WANDERED IN the Lake Noir area, and in the foothills, gone sometimes for a week or ten days, tramping the fields and lanes and riverbanks in his muddy, leaking shoes, wearing on his head a cast-off rubber rainhat of Noel's, or a cast-off Irish hat of Ewan's he had found on the floor of a closet. With his straggly graying beard he looked decades older than he was, like a figure out of mythology, or out of the mountain mists, an incongruous red scarf tied about his neck, his trousers stained at the knee, his jackets sometimes baggy, sometimes tight, sometimes not even his. Aunt Matilde had knitted him a wonderful bulky sweater heavy as a coat, with generous-sized pockets for his books and papers and pens, and she had sewn on wooden buttons she'd carved herself, out of hickory wood; but one day he returned to the manor without it, shivering like a fool in the rain, and claimed that he could not-could not-remember what had happened to it. (A man who loses an article of clothing he is wearing, Hiram intoned, will eventually lose everything.) So he wandered, always on foot. Eccentric, probably not "crazy" (for there were far crazier people in the hills), probably not dangerous. He was never to encounter, in his years of wandering, his cousin Emmanuel-by now an almost legendary, improbable figure, about whom the other Bellefleurs rarely spoke, as if they had forgotten he was a brother of Gideon's and Ewan's, and had come to think of him as remote in time, like Raphael's son Rodman, about whom so little was known: though presumably Emmanuel was still mapping the region, covering every acre on foot, and would one day return home in triumph. With his mismatched eyes (which always surprised and amused children, but sometimes made adults uneasy) and his untidy appearance and his "poesy" Vernon came to be famous in the region; of course he was also known as a Bellefleur, and given a wide berth. Farmers driving pick-up trucks along the country roads he traveled slowed courteously as they passed him, never offering him a ride (for to offer a Bellefleur anything might be interpreted as impertinence, coming from a social inferior, and everyone lived in dread of offending or insulting the Bellefleurs: Ewan had injured a number of men in fights, as had Gideon; and Raoul's temper had been legendary; Noel had been a hellion in his day; Hiram, in some ways the most sinister of the Bellefleurs, had exercised his kind of power decades ago by buying up, at dismayingly cheap prices, land belonging to farmers who had been forced into bankruptcy; and of course there had been Jean-Pierre II who had murdered eleven men one night, quite calmly and methodically, because of an "insult" he had overheard), though they were quick to stop if Vernon indicated he wanted a ride. And quick to allow him to sleep in their haylofts, or to help with farm chores (though he was almost comically clumsy) in exchange for meals. They liked Vernon-they liked him-however they may have felt about his family-and could forgive him his doggerel-poetry which he imagined, poor fool, would someday save the world. And if he spoke of a farmer's kindness, back at the castle, perhaps one of the harder-hearted Bellefleurs would overhear. . . .

JUST AS THE Bellefleurs were sharply divided on the subject of religion-more specifically, on the subject of God-so were they divided on the related subject of the existence of Evil. Whether Evil "existed" or whether it only appeared to exist, from a necessarily limited point of view; whether it certainly did exist, and existed for a purpose (inevitably divine in scope if not in sentiment); whether there was no Evil, but a small galaxy of evils, each contending for its share of human flesh; whether Evil was simply the palpable absence of Good (thought to be the laziest of the arguments); whether, given a universe dominated by spirit, the only significant Evil could be spiritual; or, conversely, whether the only significant Evil could be material, given the fundamental material nature of the universe . . . so the Bellefleurs argued, sometimes quite passionately, sometimes with a lamentable lack of civility, and not only failed to convince one another but, by way of their very passion, closed their minds against those subtleties, however infrequent, which might have aided their intellectual growth. (Indeed, the spirit of contention was sometimes thought to be the essential curse of the Bellefleurs-for isn't it out of contention that all evils spring?) Pious and good-natured, and stubborn, Vernon considered himself a henotheist, or perhaps a pantheist; what mattered, he reasoned, was not the content of one's belief but its depth. Since his God encompassed and swallowed up everything, every particle of matter-the filigree of synapses in that masterwork of cunning, the human brain; the speckled boxlike armor of the trunkfish; the screech of planing mills, Germaine's happy smile, his mother's tearful farewell, the splendor of Mount Blanc and the rank gloomy silence of Noir Swamp-since his God was identical with His creation, there could be nothing left over, no room for laborious theorizing. The pulses sang as pulses have always sung Here I am, I am here by right, I exist, and the spirit of all creation through me, and the wise man, and certainly the poet, echoes this song. (But there is a God of Destruction, too, Gideon said one day to Vernon, years ago, when members of the family still took Vernon seriously enough to quarrel with him, come and I will show you. . . . And dragged him away to the witchhobble-choked foot of Sugarloaf Hill where in angry boyish triumph he showed Vernon a partly eaten doe. The poor thing had been pregnant, evidently-her belly had been torn open by dogs-her throat so crudely slashed that she had bled to death-forced to watch (and her affrighted eyes, not yet picked clean by birds, were open and fixed) the horror of the dogs' greedy devouring jaws. She had died while witnessing the death of her fetus. And the dogs hadn't been especially hungry, Gideon said, look at all they've left. . . . Vernon gagged, and backed away; could not stop himself from vomiting, though he felt his cousin's excited contempt. But when he recovered he said, Gideon, the dogs must be nourished . . . we eat, and are eaten . . . don't despair. Gideon had stared at him. What do you mean, what do you mean, don't despair! Don't judge, Vernon whispered. Don't despair. But Gideon had looked at him uncomprehendingly, as, years later, the child Raphael was to look at him after having asked him a question about leeches. Don't despair, don't judge, don't set yourself apart from God so that you are forced to judge, Vernon implored Gideon, trying to take his angry cousin's arm. Don't touch me, Gideon said.) The family was also divided, though not as decisively, on the subject of certain more immediate beliefs. Uncle Hiram did not believe in spirits, but his brother Noel did; most of the children believed in the giant snowman in the mountains, and in the Swamp Vulture, or Noir Vulture, as it was sometimes called (indeed, it was sometimes called the Bellefleur Vulture, by people in the area), and most of the adults-though certainly not all of the adults-did not. That there were Bellefleurs who claimed to have seen the enormous bird, up in the mountains, or circling the swamp, seemed to inspire, in the others, only amused contempt: All the more reason for knowing the thing is a hoax, Della once declared, if that pathological liar Noel claims to have seen it.

Bromwell maintained a scientific detachment, pointing out, pedantically, but quite correctly, that a vulture would not seize living prey, a carrion-eater would not kill and devour living things; hence the Noir Vulture, if it existed at all (and he had no opinion on that subject, and would never commit himself, even after that unfortunate June morning) was misnamed. But no one paid attention to him, for it seemed somehow pointless to quibble about a mere name, when the thing itself was such a horror.

Vernon would not have said he "believed" in the vulture, had he been asked, before the creature actually appeared in the walled garden (of all places!-of all secluded, private, secret places) since, to his knowledge, he had never seen such a bird, and he thought it wisest to minimize the children's fears. Yet when he caught sight of it with its naked, red head, its incongruously white feathers (tipped with black as if with a tar brush), and its curious pronged tail, he knew at once what it must be. . . . Even before he saw the baby gripped in its talons he began to shout. Look! That thing! Stop it! Get a gun!-for so Vernon's words were torn from him, at the mere sight of the hideous creature.

But of course there was nothing to be done. The baby was lost. As women's screams lifted from the garden the bird rose higher and higher, with a noisy muscular grace, already jabbing at the helpless prey in its claws-tearing and stabbing at it with its sharp beak-so that pieces of flesh and skeins of blood fell, it seemed almost lightly, back toward earth; like laundry flapping in the wind the Noir Vulture rose above the highest branches of the oak trees, an astonishing sight on that mildest of pale blue June days, bearing the baby away as if it were no more than a rabbit or chipmunk.

Vernon, who happened to be returning from a morning's hike down to the river, and who was approximately sixty feet from the southern wall of the garden (for he was approaching the manor from the rear) when the creature attacked, stood frozen on the path for an instant, simply staring. Then he began to shout. His cousins!-the boys!-weren't they always shooting off guns!-and now where were they?-but in the next moment he realized that the bird was carrying something away, and that it was something living-something human- At first he thought it was Germaine. But it was too small to be Germaine.

Cassandra-?

SO THE NOIR Vulture struck, taking advantage (taking advantage, it would seem, almost rationally) of Leah's absence from the garden: no more than a five-minute absence: for she needed to make a telephone call to undo the decision of an earlier telephone call, made impetuously at seven that morning. Five minutes' absence! Five minutes! That Lissa or another of the servants or one of the older children was not nearby, watching over the cradle, was something of an accident, for Germaine had been feeling feverish and prickly that morning, and had thrown such a tantrum at breakfast that the terrace was littered with shards of glass, and the child whisked away, up to the nursery; and after that Leah's nerves were such (so she explained, afterward, again and again) that she couldn't bear anyone in the garden with her, not even the least obtrusive of the servants. And she had wanted, for once, to be alone with Cassandra, and with her thoughts, which tumbled and cascaded and spilled in every direction on certain mornings, quite enchanting her. . . .

But she had been gone no more than five minutes: no more, certainly, than ten: how had that hellish creature known?

When she returned to the garden and saw the thing just rising from the cradle, its enormous wings beating the air, she began to scream at once, and ran forward, waving her arms as if the Noir Vulture were an ordinary bird to be frightened away. Then she saw the squirming bleeding baby in its talons, and cried out Oh, Cassandra-no-in the instant before she lost consciousness, and fell heavily to the stone terrace.

(Where Vernon, some minutes later, found her. Vernon, whose wild eyes and incoherent babble, whose ticlike grimace, were those of a man Leah had never before gazed upon.)

Kincardine Christ.

Eight or ten miles north of Kincardine there was, suddenly, a giant putty-hued Christ stretched with unmuscular flatness upon His cross, angular, womanish, cartoon-crude, weary. The cross was made of two halved and unskinned logs. Three bloody teardrops moved down Christ's sunken cheeks.

The woman whom the driver of the car had acquired (not an hour previously, in the dim, smoky, overwarm recesses of Stan's Tropicana Lounge) reared back and squeezed his knee in girlish alarm, and laughed, though the sight of the thing could not have been entirely new to her. Didn't she live, after all, around here?

Not around here, exactly.

But your mother's people, you said . . .

Oh, they're from all over, they're scattered all over hell, she said irritably. She was straining to see the Christ as they passed, though she was lodged beside, had seated herself immediately beside, the man who drove the big cream-colored automobile. Jesus, she whispered. Then giggled clumsily at her mistake. Then giggled, blushing, at that lapse of taste. . . . The cross itself must have been about fifteen feet high. Christ was well over twelve feet tall. He gazed out through grape-hued melancholy eyes at the traffic on the highway, His back to the unpainted farmhouse, His dead-pale arms stretched out unnaturally wide. His hair was black-tar-black, crow's-wing-black. His ribs were prominent, perhaps He had been starved before being nailed to the cross, His legs were painfully thin, a child's legs, though very long. How silly a fate, the driver of the car thought briefly.

That funny kind of hat they gave him, there, the woman said. Her words trailed off.

The crown of thorns?