The Half-Hidden (Part Three)

By Marc-Yves Tumin

In contrast to her parents, who lived to travel, and repaired to Flonzaley House -- the ancestral messuage in Ulster -- each summer, Miss Danielle was deeply attached to hearth and home. When the lace-curtain DeMontmorencys were in town, the crimson vexilla of privilege would flutter from the rooftop, heralding their arrival. They would transform themselves, become intensely animated, and receive their myriad guests with exceptional enthusiasm -- throwing open windows, flinging back curtains, and propping doors ajar -- whereas their reclusive daughter was a rare flower who flourished in the shade, preferring the innuendo of half-light and solitude to the inflection of vacation resorts, poolside soirées, and dazzling conversation.

Sometimes, when the child's parents made their entrance, the maid from Saragossa would exclaim how closely Danielle resembled a mermaid half-hidden in seaweed: above the surface, a girl; beneath, the depths conspiring to conceal a world of which only she could partake. And sometimes she would brush her hair from her face and tussle her curls as though flicking through the leaves of a new fascicle of Dickens, borne across the Atlantic and flung ashore to the throngs of readers, waiting with anticipation on the wharf.

Danielle's parents urged the youth to mingle with her compeers and plied her with sundry physicians, tutors, and remedies, as I have described, to no avail. However, if they could have comprehended the undersurface of a countenance, her expression might have been construed to adumbrate the lineaments of a foreboding.

Time passed and her parents busied themselves in their social whirl and secured the services of an English governess to mind Danielle when they were otherwise engaged. As events transpired, one day, while the governess was scolding the help, an aged gypsy lady, to all appearances a teller of fortunes, shambled past the iron fence that enclosed the front garden, flung herself down on the stoop, and, with many dramatic gestures, importuned the strange gods of her idolatry for a sip of water.

The necromancer had arranged an elaborate bandanna around her head and adorned herself with pendulous earrings, a parti-colored skirt, and a flotilla of clinquant bangles. Someone said that she kept squinting over her shoulder.

The governess descried the itinerant spiritualist from an upstairs window and was appalled, and, although she could only discern the traveler's silhouette in the sylvan shadows, denounced her as "a fright," chortling that she would "be gratified to cudgel the brutish trespasser," and rang for the authorities.

While the governess rattled on, the servants, let loose by the peevish pedagogue, swarmed over the gypsy as though a flock of crows mobbing an owl. Suddenly, Danielle appeared, parting the besieging retainers and leading the crone to her tiny table, whereupon she offered her refreshments. She smiled at the venerable visitor, poured a cup of tea, and, with a curtsy, presented it to the grateful beldam, who alternately grinned at the child as she quaffed her drink and grimaced at the commotion.

All the while, the governess had been endeavoring to rush downstairs, but found the door to her chamber unaccountably locked. Between sips, the interloper feigned ignorance at the governess's rodomontade, cupping her ear and returning her invective with waves of the hand and contrapuntal winks, tisk-tisks, and shushes.

Upon quaffing her restorative dram, the aged crone took Danielle's palm in her fingers, traced its lines, smiled, pursed her lips, smiled again, and suddenly was aghast. Regaining her composure, she placed her hand on the girl's head and spouted a tumble of words in a strange language, while raising her eyes to the cerulean vault of Heaven.

Meanwhile, a servant detected the governess's increasing commotion and raced upstairs to release the door, but, contrary to her superior's asseverations, found it unlocked. The governess brushed her aside and clattered downstairs. However, by the time she arrived at the front garden, the gypsy lady had vanished, and although a cadre of peace officers assiduously scoured the neighborhood, they were at a loss to find her.

Shortly thereafter, Danielle solemnly announced to any and all that an unusually large orange-and-white cat had taken up residence in the back garden, sauntering out onto the brick wall, crouching behind a rose bush, and peering at her. With much pomp and circumstance, a cortege was organized, either to greet it or to hunt it. It was unclear. No evidence of the beast was uncovered, however, and, hence, no one believed the child.

Her French tutor declared it a phantom and "nothing but the tissue of poetic fancy." Nevertheless, she suggested christening the creature "Keats," because "poets and moggies thrive in the gathering twilight."

The Irish maid tittered into her calico apron, but adjured the child to "feed the kit a bowl of fresh milk each day."

The governess -- who refused to feign interest in the feline apparition -- was convinced that such a "dreadful being," if it existed, would, by its infernal nature, steal the girl's breath, and vowed to "demolish it, if it trespassed" in her precinct. Danielle, ever the contrarian, elected to befriend it.

(Continued next week)