self-consciously “gracious” movements she had learned from observing ladies at church; when in the presence of the Bellefleurs she stood very straight, her small hands clasped together just below her breasts, her eyes wide and dark and intense. She was not intimidated, though she might have been surprised, by Jean-Pierre’s boisterous charm—his exaggerated compliments which always sounded mocking when addressed to women, and which were, indeed, viciously mocking when addressed to his wife; his airy theatrical mannerisms; his spinning out of farfetched “frontier” tales learned in private clubs in Manhattan, and around mahogany tables on Wall Street, in the feverish years of his “rise”; and his careless tactless familiarity with the country’s ruling families, and with Washington politicians, generally known as contemptible but possessing devilishly admirable traits not unlike those attributed to Jean-Pierre Bellefleur, a duke’s son after all, himself. She was not intimidated, not even alarmed, since her own father—! Ah, yes, her own father. Who was still trying to sell Jean-Pierre shares along the Nautauga. Who bathed twice a year—in May, and then again in September, before the first frost.
She was pregnant, after less than two months of marriage.
She was pregnant, a girl of sixteen who looked, even close up, like a child of twelve.
Jedediah had been planning to leave for years, he had been dreaming of the mountains, the high lake country, the solitude of balsam and tamarack and yellow birch and spruce and hemlock and tall white pines, some of them as thick as seven feet at the base, of surpassing beauty, and ageless: even before the most public of his father’s disgraces (the others, those that had broken his mother, were certainly worse), even before his brother brought home the little O’Hagan girl he claimed from the first he intended to marry—no matter that Jean-Pierre had plans for him, as he had plans for all his sons involving heiresses of Dutch, German, even of French stock, before the newspapers hawked the secrets of “La Compagnie de New York,” and even after: and then too, if he wanted simply to flee Louis and Germaine and the heart-stopping fact of their union, the fact that they shared the same bed night after night, now routinely, now without even self-consciousness (though Jedediah could not quite comprehend such an enormity) he might have followed Harlan out west, or settled in to work farmland along the Nautauga, since his father owned thousands of acres of land in the Valley and would have leased or sold it (he would not have given it, at least not until Jedediah married) very reasonably. But it was the north country he turned to. It was the north country he required. To lose himself, to find God. To ascend as a pilgrim, confident that God awaited.
I will be a guide if necessary, he informed his father, who was, at first, speechless with anger: for when the West Indies deal went through he would need men he could trust as overseers, who would not be timid about handling the slaves firmly. I will live absolutely alone for one full year, from one June to the next, he told his skeptical brother Louis, who was rather hurt—for he was extremely fond of Jedediah in his bullying negligent way, and it frightened him, initially, to contemplate life with the family so diminished. For family meant everything.
(First their mother had fled, after her nervous collapse. After their father had disgraced himself in public—or so it would seem, if one judged the situation not by the old man’s casual remarks but by the highly vocal remarks of others: Jean-Pierre Bellefleur’s second term as a congressman had ended abruptly, attended by charges of scandal and corruption, but it was never clear exactly what he had done since so many other men were involved, businessmen and politicians alike, what with inadequate laws and governors famously “pliant,” as the expression went. After weeks of
She was pregnant, after less than two months of marriage.
She was pregnant, a girl of sixteen who looked, even close up, like a child of twelve.
Jedediah had been planning to leave for years, he had been dreaming of the mountains, the high lake country, the solitude of balsam and tamarack and yellow birch and spruce and hemlock and tall white pines, some of them as thick as seven feet at the base, of surpassing beauty, and ageless: even before the most public of his father’s disgraces (the others, those that had broken his mother, were certainly worse), even before his brother brought home the little O’Hagan girl he claimed from the first he intended to marry—no matter that Jean-Pierre had plans for him, as he had plans for all his sons involving heiresses of Dutch, German, even of French stock, before the newspapers hawked the secrets of “La Compagnie de New York,” and even after: and then too, if he wanted simply to flee Louis and Germaine and the heart-stopping fact of their union, the fact that they shared the same bed night after night, now routinely, now without even self-consciousness (though Jedediah could not quite comprehend such an enormity) he might have followed Harlan out west, or settled in to work farmland along the Nautauga, since his father owned thousands of acres of land in the Valley and would have leased or sold it (he would not have given it, at least not until Jedediah married) very reasonably. But it was the north country he turned to. It was the north country he required. To lose himself, to find God. To ascend as a pilgrim, confident that God awaited.
I will be a guide if necessary, he informed his father, who was, at first, speechless with anger: for when the West Indies deal went through he would need men he could trust as overseers, who would not be timid about handling the slaves firmly. I will live absolutely alone for one full year, from one June to the next, he told his skeptical brother Louis, who was rather hurt—for he was extremely fond of Jedediah in his bullying negligent way, and it frightened him, initially, to contemplate life with the family so diminished. For family meant everything.
(First their mother had fled, after her nervous collapse. After their father had disgraced himself in public—or so it would seem, if one judged the situation not by the old man’s casual remarks but by the highly vocal remarks of others: Jean-Pierre Bellefleur’s second term as a congressman had ended abruptly, attended by charges of scandal and corruption, but it was never clear exactly what he had done since so many other men were involved, businessmen and politicians alike, what with inadequate laws and governors famously “pliant,” as the expression went. After weeks of
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