“Bandy, dear. Pray what is your opinion on the matter?” Sensibel asked.
Bandit choked while his opinion on the matter was driven inward. It was driven so far inward that it lodged at the base of his tail. His opinion was not suited to polite society. It involved a suicidal gesture of embrace that would carry the flighty Sensibel clear off the tree limb and into the bulrushes, her fan still fluttering.
“I think,” he said eventually, “that a lady’s heart alone must determine the choice, even if it leads to heartbreak.”
“Oh, nobly said! But do you intend me to break my heart?”
“It will make you wiser.”
“Then I shall break my heart constantly.”
“Yes,” Frisk said. “Again and again.”
“Ahem! Le coeur a ses raisons, que la raison ne connaît point. A wise lady makes room also for the reasons of the reason. Found together in the right Proportion in a lady, the reasons of the heart and the reasons of the reason draw forth an inward grace that does the choosing. It naturally chooses the suitable mate. Yet it is Custom that guards the sense of right Proportion.”
The young ladies plainly didn’t know how to take their mother’s declarations. Her pronouncements fell with a triumphant thump, evoking the silence of assent.
“I would not call him mate but rather sleeping partner since he is with his beloved scarce long enough to serve the function of marriage, then farewell, he is gone,” Frisk pointed out.
“Nay, he lingers in the environs as protector of his family’s hunting ground and he is present in the moral beauty of his children,” Pawsense replied. “That is why when thinking of a mate there are considerations.”
Sensibella held her peace, regretting with a deep blush that she had implied so much as a vagrant affection. It was Cousin Bandit’s fault: he had voiced the forbidden topic of l’amour libre. At the moment, he seemed to have been invisibly pushed further out on the limb by Mother’s frown. He was going to be pushed right into the pond. Mother didn’t correct opinions; instead, she subtly adjusted the boundaries of what could be said and what was better left unsaid. Stay silent then. Here come the Considerations.
“I must take leave to observe that, provided it is selectively controlled, the intended migration to our parish of Raccoonopolitans speaking diverse tongues is much in our favour,” Pawsense began. “They will all be wanting homes. It could not be a better time for making a choice of tenants, very responsible tenants. They have liberal notions, and are as likely to make desirable tenants as any set of people one should meet with. And among them will be fine young men, with a great deal of intelligence, spirit, and brilliancy which they will apply to maintaining our hunting woods and marshes.”
Pawsense’s mood dropped on her daughters like a shroud. Bandit surveyed his cousins. Goodpaws nodded her head sagely at the sagacity of her mother. Frisk, squinting against the bright June sun, watched a solitary ripple make its way under the pollen dust covering the pond. Nimble lost herself in an examination of her tail. And Sensibel – poor Sensibel – had the vacant eyes of a lady whose dream has abruptly ended without the opportunity for her to return to reality. The sisters he had tumbled about with in the early Spring now formed a still-life painting of arrested beauty. They were midsummer lilies on the edge of wilting. Their spirits flourished in the game of imagining a future husband, a pastime that balanced fancy with equal measures of good sense. It now seemed to Bandit that his opinion about educating the heart through heartbreak was immature. Instead it was through this idle conversation between sisters that the heart was educated. He wondered if his own heart was being educated along with theirs. But the education had been crudely brought to earth. Choice of a mate was reduced to a single-minded concern: marriage to a Raccoon of Property or existence as an Old Maid. An Old Maid like Goodpaws, who appeared to be set in this disposition as if by some law of Nature. Bandit decided that her real name was Dullzilla.
“Heigh-ho! We must away and gather Clams. Your Father is visiting at dusk, and I would be quite surprised if he did not bring with him a most intriguing young man.”
This attempt to rouse the curiosity of the daughters evoked no fluster of excitement. Instead, the girls silently rose as one out of their languor and began descending the tree.
“Coming, Bandit?”
“No. I’ll just sit here a little longer, if that’s okay.”
“As you wish.”
Bandit closed his eyes and felt the midsummer sun on his fur. What a contrast this spacious open vista made with the chimney! And there was a contented ease to this place, unlike the anxiety of the wet night streets where he had been a cub. He could thrive in this paradise. A stream trickled down through the pine trees on the ridge into the bulrushes beneath him, feeding a huge, shallow pond that stretched away surrounded by a mixed hardwood forest on one side and parkland on the other. A tiny island with two cedar trees seemed to be placed in the water for no other reason than to be beautiful. Away at the distant end, the pond drained through another stream into the creek which was the main raccoon pathway across the city. There at the end of the pond, over the stream, was a footbridge, and over the footbridge was something fanciful – an ornate, painted roof that sloped with a pronounced curve and held a line of little gabled window dwellings for birds to fly in and out of. A wonder! A house without walls set over a stream, something he could not give a name to.
But I can. Bandit was gazing at a piece of late nineteenth-century Garden Architecture influenced by the East Asian style which was a fascination for artists at the time. It is called the Pagoda Covered Bridge or alternatively the Gazebo Bridge, and was the apt place for Sensibella and her golden-furred sisters to greet their father, who was himself a pagoda-like figure in his community on the Heights.
Inhaling the fragrances of this setting, Bandit idly considered what he would need to do to become a gentleman of means and mate with one of his cousins. Which one most suited his nature? Goodpaws was out of the question. Entombed in the role of Dutiful Daughter, she inherited her mother’s propriety with none of her cunning to the extent that even her sisters found her terrifying. Yet beneath her stolid exterior lay a dormant strength of mind. It would take an intelligent mate to awaken that power to think for herself, perhaps the nearby Squire whom she had generously offered to Sensibel. Thank heaven for Friskywits! Yet Frisk reminded him of Touchwit – the same disruptive prescience – making her too familiar to be desirable. Nimbletoes, on the other hand, was one of the two sisters who was patently exotic. Obviously, she took after her father. Her fingers and toes, like her muzzle, were delicate and slender, and she entertained the family with her singing. But she seemed ephemeral beside the other exotic sister.
What magical spell drew him to Sensibella? Was it her proud, romantic nature? Her elegance of spirit? Her companionable affection? It seemed sister, mother, friend, and playmate cohabited her honest body. And from her proud cheek bones to the tip of her bushy tail her fur had a honey-coloured sheen that spoke of her mixed ancestry. And she was the most huggable wrestler. The scent of her anal glands still remained in his nostrils from the early Spring. Really, he didn’t know why he was so drawn to her, but he concluded sadly that Sensibel was destined for a highborn mate while he, Bandit, would be lucky if she let him lick her toes.
“Bandit, love? Are you awake?”
Sensibel! She had returned to the tree. Why …?
“Press in closer and talk to me.”
Bandit opened his eyes and saw his cousin stretched out on her tummy at the beginning of his tree limb. Now that her mother had gone, she was relaxed. Perhaps she wanted to share her relief. He tiptoed toward her along the branch and sat. Not so close as to be a sibling, not so far as to be a suitor. Just a cousin. Since his arrival last night, that relationship had permitted an easy sharing of feelings.
“Mother’s not so commanding as she seems. She just wants the best for her children.”
“I understand.” It was nice not to have to speak polite speech. “But she’s a total change from my Mom. She never got in our heads. She just taught us some skills, then kicked us out into the world.”
“But that must be so frightening!”
“It’s not frightening here.”
“I don’t think that is so. Our sunny place is subject to the odious pressure of politics. They have turned Mother into an indomitable matchmaker. Tell me, does Aunt Slypaws care about whom you marry?”
“My mother? She doesn’t give a flying clam about marriage.”
Sensibel giggled. “I thought that being sisters your mother and mine would embrace the selfsame view. How are you going to find a mate?”
“I am going to find a mate by a process of elimination.”
“Oh, you are a dangerous one!”
“I don’t know why I said that. Really, I have no idea how I am going to find a mate. I have no property or sense of proportion. Would you want me as your mate?”
“If you weren’t my cousin, you mean?”
“Yes, okay – if I weren’t your cousin.”
She didn’t reply at once. She was thinking the prospect over. Obviously, the idea of being mated to him had never occurred to her.
