The Half-Hidden (Part Nine)

By Marc-Yves Tumin

Our purpose, these nine chapters, gentle reader, has been to uplift and entertain, and as such, we shall spare you further details of this tragedy except to say that a flying squadron of police sped to the DeMontmorency residence and was greeted by a congregation of importunate neighbors at the gates of the prepossessing edifice.

Upon mounting a ruffle of clangorous knocks to the front door with no response, the officers smashed a stained-glass panel, unbolted the portal, and hurried to a back stairwell where a clutch of servants huddled in a bit of an upset. At the foot of its slope of slate access lay the governess, eyes aghast, groaning softly in uneasy sprawl.

The policemen ascended the steps toward the refulgent glare cascading from the garden only to encounter an outsized dog weltering about, rending what seemed to be a parcel of crimson rags. The hellhound attacked the Men in Blue without provocation, flinging down an officer and tearing at his throat until it was shot dead.

Directing their attention from their monstrous assailant, the policemen observed an unusually large cat expiring in a pool of blood near the back wall. Crumpled next to it, inseparable in death, was the pitiful prone figure of a young girl.

A sergeant approached the child and leaned over her. The lineaments of sadness traced their course across his visage as he gently brushed some wisps of tousled hair from her brow, when, to his astonishment, she opened her eyes, and, in stoic silence, endeavored to stand.

His comrades rushed to his assistance and undertook to trundle the girl inside the house, but the child protested so adamantly, and clung to the fallen feline with such fervency, they relented and brought it indoors, too, setting it down beside her on the hearthrug.

While a physician dressed her wounds, Danielle sobbed quietly, but neither in distress from her injuries, which were considerable, nor from the effects of her narrow escape. Rather, it was evident she grieved for Keatsie - from whom she refused to avert her gaze - and that the font of her dismay found its source in his sad fate.

Meantime, the officers looked at each other in wonderment that the child had been spared, as if by miracle, until someone, upon further examination of Mordred, declared that the deceased bullmastiff's eyes had been gravely damaged.

The hours ticked by on the tall clock across from the fireplace, and, ultimately, Danielle's parents returned from their Newport junket, shaken and pale. And they clasped their daughter ever so closely, covering her with kisses, dabbing at their tears with gossamer handkerchiefs, and thanking everyone and anyone continually.

Eventually, Danielle was paraded to her bedroom and tucked in a tent of coverlets, and the house lamps were extinguished, but her father was debarred the blessing of sleep, and, as the fire burned low, stayed up, transfixed by the sight of Keatsie as if pondering a great mystery.

At midnight, the case clock tolled, and, as though summoned by an unseen power, the governess appeared with an intricate white surcingle bedizening her head. She was accompanied by a brace of servants and directed them to remove the cat forthwith. However, Danielle's father sprang to his feet, and, in a voice of uncustomary force, shouted: "Leave him alone! Let him lie there! And get out!"

The governess and her men effaced themselves. And Danielle's father continued his vigil. And, all through the night, Keatsie lay there on his side as if a soldier, bleeding into the carpeting, bleeding into the floorboards, bleeding into the long and storied history of the DeMontmorencys of Ulster.

Time passed and Danielle made a full recovery. Then, one afternoon, while making faces in a mirror, she thought that she discerned the silhouette of the gypsy lady - the late object of her mansuetude - felt a presentiment, skipped downstairs to the front garden, and beheld the aged crone insouciantly perambulating sidelong to the listed pile.

"You are well, my child?" the Traveling woman inquired, delving into Danielle's thoughts with a sympathetic affection disclosed by a smile. "Yes, ma'am, thank you," Danielle replied with a curtsey.

"And your cat? The large cat?" "My cat, ma'am?" "You are telling stories still to this cat?"

Danielle thought this a queer question. Nonetheless, she answered quickly in a small voice: "He died."

"Did he?" "He was interred in the yard, under the rose bush." "Was he?"

There was a caesural pause in the laconic meter of their conversation. Then Danielle disengaged herself from the visitor's magnetic eyebeams and glided with muffled tread toward the nether regions of the house.

It was dusk and a fretwork of winter light illuminated the snowbound garden. Sure enough, Keatsie's remains had quite vanished from where they had reposed. And neither footprint nor filament of life was visible while the wreathed flakes descended in circumfluent gusts athwart tree and branch and trellis, bowing the hedges and inspissating the variform shadows on the pallid landscape of his demesne.

(Conclusion next week)