Asphodel
"DESTROY," H.D. had pencilled across the title page of this autobiographical novel. Although the manuscript survived, it has remained unpublished since its completion in the 1920s. Regarded by many as one of the major poets of the modernist period, H.D. created in Asphodel a remarkable and readable experimental prose text, which in its manipulation of technique and voice can stand with the works of Joyce, Woolf, and Stein; in its frank exploration of lesbian desire, pregnancy and motherhood, artistic independence for women, and female experience during wartime, H.D.'s novel stands alone.
A sequel to the author's HERmione, Asphodel takes the reader into the bohemian drawing rooms of pre-World War I London and Paris, a milieu populated by such thinly disguised versions of Ezra Pound, Richard Aldington, May Sinclair, Brigit Patmore, and Margaret Cravens; on the other side of what H.D. calls "the chasm," the novel documents the war's devastating effect on the men and women who considered themselves guardians of beauty. Against this riven backdrop, Asphodel plays out the story of Hermione Gart, a young American newly arrived in Europe and testing for the first time the limits of her sexual and artistic identities. Following Hermione through the frustrations of a literary world dominated by men, the failures of an attempted lesbian relationship and a marriage riddled with infidelity, the birth of an illegitimate child, and, finally, happiness with a female companion, Asphodel describes with moving lyricism and striking candor the emergence of a young and gifted woman from her self-exile.
Editor Robert Spoo's introduction carefully places Asphodel in the context of H.D.'s life and work. In an appendix featuring capsule biographies of the real figures behind the novel's fictional characters, Spoo provides keys to this roman à clef.
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Perdita Schaffner and the New Directions Publishing Corporation for permission to publish
Any serious editing project is a collaborative effort, and I have benefited from the advice of many persons within and outside the community of H.D. scholars. From the start, the wisdom and support of Susan Stanford Friedman and Louis H. Silverstein have been invaluable; they read drafts of the introductory material and made suggestions about problematic details in H.D.’s text. I am also grateful for the kind encouragement of Perdita Schaffner.
I would like to thank D. Thomas Benediktson and Eileen Gregory for information about H.D.’s classical allusions; Corinna del Greco Lobner, Jane Nicholson, and Vibeke Petersen for advice about H.D.’s use of foreign languages; and Louis H. Silverstein, Charles Timbrell, and Caroline Zilboorg for biographical information about H.D. and her friends. Thanks also to Joanne Cornell, Michael Davis, Lars Engle, Norman Grabo, Monty Montee, Mary O’Toole, and Omar Pound for reading portions of this text and providing helpful criticisms. It was Gary Burnett who first made me aware of
Thanks also to Diana Collecott, Joseph A. Kestner, David Kramer, A. Walton Litz, John Logan, Claus Melchior, Adalaide Morris, Lawrence Rainey, Caroline Rittenhouse, Kathy A. Sears, and Patricia Willis. I would also like to acknowledge the valuable assistance of Steve Jones and the staff at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University; Sidney F. Huttner and the staff at Special Collections, McFarlin Library, University of Tulsa; and Leslie A. Morris and the staff at the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia.
I also want to express my gratitude to Duke University Press and its editors for their excellent work. This edition would not have been possible without the advice and sensitive collaboration of Joanne Ferguson, who supported this project from its inception.
Special thanks to the owners and proprietors of Silverleigh for their friendship, hospitality, and conversation, and to Monty Montee for his patience and refreshingly ironic smile.
A National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend in 1989 provided a crucial early impetus and allowed me to travel to archives.
Introduction
H.D.’s
Along with
First composed in 1921–1922 and probably revised a few years later,
Fortunately, for us and for H.D., one copy survived, despite the fact that its title page also bears the instruction “DESTROY” scrawled in H.D.’s hand. It is true that part of
Rather than succumb to this pressure, Hermione urges Fayne, who is planning to return to America, to live with her in London in a bohemian ménage of their own fashioning. The impassioned speech in which Hermione affirms her love for Fayne (“ ‘I, Hermione, tell you I love you Fayne Rabb’ ” [p. 52]) and defends the lesbian lifestyle she imagines for them is the climax of part 1. Despite her eloquence, however, she fails to persuade the defensively spiteful Fayne, and her shock is soon compounded when Fayne writes from America that she is going to be married to a respectable lecturer on literature. Part 1 of
Part 2 jumps ahead to 1915. Now married to Jerrold, Hermione is recovering from the stillbirth of her child. The war has been raging for some time, splitting consciousness into what Hermione calls “pre-chasm” and “chasm” thinking, a fissure that is dramatically figured by the temporal gap between parts 1 and 2. Like Rose Macaulays
Inspired by legends of Druids and Phoenicians, Hermione fancies herself a “Morgan le Fay” and her child the product of a visit from the god Helios — a private myth that gives Hermione a kind of Madonna/witch identity, restoring to her some of the playfully subversive innocence she had enjoyed with Fayne. (George had said in part 1 that she and Fayne would have been “burned in Salem for witches” [p. 50].) Hermione decides to keep the baby and, following a period of solitary self-communion, meets the wealthy but troubled Beryl de Rothfeldt (the Bryher figure), who helps her during the later stages of her pregnancy. After a frightening encounter with a jealous, vengeful Darrington back from the trenches, Hermione succeeds in breaking away from him and establishing with Beryl the very ménage that Fayne Rabb had earlier renounced, except that this one is augmented by Phoebe, Hermione’s daughter, whom Beryl promises to take care of as if the child were a “puppy.” Salvation is mutual at the end of
Even so brief a synopsis as this suggests that
In terms of aesthetic construction,
This kaleidoscopic (or perhaps cinematic) effect is occasionally punctuated by passages of direct, urgent authorial address to the reader, particularly when war is the subject: “some god had set a head there in a restaurant (imagine it but I know you can’t quite realize it) in that odd 18, 18, 18. Do you know what I mean? In 1918 there was one head. . ” (p. 141). These oscillations of authorial voice reflect the uncertain boundary between autobiographical fiction and personal memoir, between the writing subject and the self as a projected, dramatized “other.”14 On the whole, H.D. moves skillfully between these narrative positions or stances of the self, so skillfully that she seems to fulfill one of Baudelaire’s conditions for modern art: “Qu’est-ce que l’art pur suivant la conception moderne? C’est créer une magie suggestive contenant à la fois l’objet et le sujet, le monde extérieur à l’artiste et l’artiste lui-même.”15
This unfettered authorial voice, with its variety of moods and inflections, is well adapted to a story that proceeds by repeated motifs and situations. An especially insistent pattern is that of the woman endangered by a hostile, uncomprehending society. From Hermione’s doleful meditations on loan of Arc and Marie Antoinette to the very real perils besetting her relationship with Fayne Rabb, to the suicidal thoughts of Shirley Thornton and Beryl, women in
Beryl represents the happy culmination, the telos perhaps, of a long series of love affairs in Hermione’s life, each an approximation to the ideal but not its realization. Together,
Laodameia died; Helen died; Leda, the beloved of Jupiter, went before. It is better to repose in the earth betimes than to sit up late; better, than to cling pertinaciously to what we feel crumbling under us, and to protract an inevitable fall. We may enjoy the present while we are insensible of infirmity and decay: but the present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come. There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the grave: there are no voices, O Rhodope! that are not soon mute, however tuneful: there is no name, with whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated, of which the echo is not faint at last.16
H.D.’s substitution of “asphodel” for “amaranth” is typical of her quotational style and may have been unintentional.17 The entire passage from Landor is relevant, for it contains several themes that haunt the pages of
Aesop’s sobering counsels about the inevitability of suffering represent one aspect of
The sole extant version of
As the Beinecke typescript was the sole possible basis for this edition, the usual avenues of editorial problem-solving, such as collation of editions and comparison of alternative manuscript readings, were closed to me.20 Total authority for editorial changes brings with it total answerability for those changes, and I have tried to exercise caution for H.D.’s sake and for my own. Whenever possible, I consulted other published works by H.D., in particular lifetime editions, for analogous or related textual details, although I regarded these peripheral texts as heuristic rather than binding. Occasionally the typescript contains a word or phrase that seems garbled; in these cases I have relied on my judgment, taking care to avoid over-ingenious solutions.
H.D.’s spelling offers a special challenge. She frequently misspelled both common and uncommon words, including foreign words, which she sometimes rendered phonetically. She was aware of this tendency and expressed concern over it, writing Marianne Moore as late as 1952: “I still have a sort of Puritan complex, I must spell correctly.”21 I have corrected approximately 300 misspellings (around 170 different words) for this edition. I have retained certain unusual spellings, however, either because they are attested variant spellings or because they are especially characteristic of H.D. and appear in other texts by her (some published during her lifetime): “blurr,” “hybiscus,” “hypatica,” “cotton wadging,” “baptismal fount,” “carn,” “unwieldly,” “etherialized,” and others. Although British spelling predominates in the typescript, certain words fluctuate between British and American spelling (“realised” and “realized,” for example); I have not altered these spellings, regarding them as a significant manifestation of H.D.’s expatriate temperament.
Due to H.D.’s spotty revision of the typescript, some proper names and place-names waver in spelling (“Hermione”/“Hermoine”; “Lowndes”/“Lowdnes”), or appear in variant versions (“Captain Tim Kent”/“Captain Ned Trent”); I have regularized these spellings and variants. In general, I have treated misspelled names as ordinary misspellings, changing “Shelly” to “Shelley,” and “Houkashi” to “Hokusai,” for example. I have occasionally allowed the external, historical referent of a name to determine spelling when it seemed clear that H.D. had that referent in mind. For example, I have altered “Milais” to “Millet” (the painter of the
Literary quotations and allusions in
Similarly, I have made relatively few alterations in H.D.’s punctuation. To grant H.D. her punctuation is to respect her syntax, the special rhythms and “voices” of her text. Her use of commas is loose and impressionistic, a practice appropriate to the free, experimental style of
In general, I have proceeded in terms of a flexible notion of H.D.’s “sensibility,” a heuristic concept that has allowed me to accept a traditional model of authorial intention while remaining alert to the exigencies of an experimental modern text and sensitive to current theories of feminine writing. My decision to correct H.D.’s spelling but to leave her punctuation virtually unaltered — to regard the former as error and the latter as creative idiosyncrasy — is of course artificial to a certain extent.23 But the resulting text is, I believe, one faithful to H.D.’s intentions, insofar as these can be inferred or reasonably posited, and to the spirit of her prose writing as registered in the typescript of
R.S.
1. See especially Susan Stanford Friedman,
2. H.D. to John Cournos, July 9 [ca. 1920–1921?], in “Art and Ardor in World War One: Selected Letters from H.D. to John Cournos,” ed. Donna Krolik Hollenberg,
3. Friedman, p. 141.
4.
5. H.D., “H.D. by
6. H.D. to Norman Holmes Pearson, October 14, 1959, unpublished letter, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
7. Ibid.
8. H.D. to Bryher, from Lausanne, April 18, 1949, unpublished letter, Beinecke Library.
9. H.D. to Pearson, October 14, 1959. Even as she urges Pearson and Bryher to destroy “carbons” of
10. H.D. to George Plank, March 31, 1925, unpublished letter, Beinecke Library. For a detailed account of the complexly interrelated novels of H.D.’s “Madrigal Cycle” (
11. H.D. and the Greggs left for France in the summer of 1911;
12. H.D. to Bryher, April 18, 1949.
13. See Robert Spoo, “H.D.’s Dating
14. Cf. Friedman, pp. 107, 171–72.
15. From “L’Art Philosophique,” in
16. Walter Savage Landor,
17. The covering sheet and title page of
18. William Carlos Williams also noted the interdependence of love, death, and the imagination in his late poem “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower.”
19. H.D.’s composition process typically began with rough pencil drafts in notebooks, followed by her own typed draft of the material she had written. She then had her typist prepare a fair copy. The typescript of
20. Two small exceptions should be noted. The typescript
21. H.D. to Marianne Moore, January 19, 1952, unpublished letter, Marianne Moore Papers, V:23:33, Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia.
22. Late in life, at the urging of Norman Holmes Pearson, H.D. went through her published and unpublished writings and attempted to regularize comma usage and other accidentals, though at times she found the task uncongenial and left it to Pearson. I have decided not to impose this late practice on a work H.D. produced in the 1920s, when her creative assumptions and attitudes toward publishing were different.
23. Readers may wish to compare this edition of
24. A comprehensive list of significant editorial changes to the
Asphodel
“There are no fields of asphodel this side of the grave.”
PART I
1
France. France swirled under her feet for now that the boat was static it seemed, inappositely, that the earth must roll, revolve and whirl. Hermione clutched the railings of the stairs and the broad flight of stairs leading upstairs whirled and turned with her as the narrow cabin step ladder of steps leading down into the sordid ship’s belly had never, it appeared, even in its worst days, done. The memories of sea storm were pacific compared with this thing: stairs that inappositely whirled under her and a bed that when she flung herself upon it, heaved and swayed under her, heaving and swaying and swaying with the heave and sway of faded rose buds in loops that was the almost effaced but still reliable pattern of the salmon-coloured paper of the wall she stared at. Stairs in her imagination heaved and sank under her. She seemed about to float away, lax, bodiless.
“There is nothing wrong with you.” Madame Dupont, their boat acquaintance, had stayed with them, had the room down the corridor one remove from the rooms of Hermione and the two Rabbs. “There is nothing wrong with you.” Hermione managed to heave aloft on one elbow and by a determined and valiant effort keep the bed steady under her elbow while she listened. “There is nothing wrong with you.” A dark figure stood in the doorway. It drew nearer. It was clothed like a sister of charity in black, it had a black hat pulled over its eyes, the very hat they had all so bargained over this morning, shopping in Havre with Madame Dupont. Madame Dupont, had insisted on it. “My sister and my brother-in-law will be so shocked to see me back from New York without the proper black things. I didn’t get them in New York as they are so expensive.” Madame Dupont had arranged her mourning to suit her purse and her convenience. Was it French simply? Putting on black when she got to Havre, saving her best black, not wearing black on the boat. This mourning de convenance seemed suddenly to Hermione inconsolably amusing. She would begin to laugh and laugh and laugh. She would never be consoled. Imaginez vous, buying the things in Havre where it was cheaper. . cheaper for someone you cared for, but Madame Dupont hadn’t even cared for her mother. Said so. Told them frankly “you see. . he was a very old man. But even that. . in France. . But you see. .” and she had whispered the tale of her
Hermione’s elbow kept the bed quiet for a moment. The bed for a moment, was forced, by her effort, to rest firm and four-footed on the floor. “But Madame Dupont, I never said there was.” “No, Madame Rabb tells me. You think you are suffering from the effects of the boat. You are not.” “I don’t think anything—” “Don’t interrupt. You think, owing to erroneous impressions, that you, having kept well on the ship, are now ill. The people who thought they were ill on the ship are now well. Is this some sort of punishment for my arrogance, you may well think. But you need not. God in his goodness will eradicate this error from your mind—” O God, Hermione would begin to laugh and laugh and laugh. Her elbow could not now keep the bed from wobbling. The bed itself capered on one foot, on three feet, up — down— “O, O, thank you.” If she had known Madame Dupont was a Christian Scientist she would not have wasted Eau de Cologne on her on the boat. If she had so known. Should Hermione remind Madame Dupont of those sunny, dazzling, sick sterile days when everyone said that they would so much rather the boat went down? Or those terrible intense days of baffling salt-whipped storm when there was no one to talk to and only she and Fayne Rabb had survived the mêlée? She had not then said to Madame Dupont “you are not sea-sick” though Madame Dupont kept on now insisting “you are not land-sick. There is, I assure you, nothing wrong. Mrs. Rabb, who persists in error, says you had better rest here. We are going out for lunch. But I persist in this. You will be all right for dinner.”
“Brrrr sous la livre — Brrrr sous la livre” went on and on and on. A raucous voice persisted that something was some number of sous (brrrrring over it) the livre and what was a livre anyhow. Livre, livre. A book. A book. It was all a book. They had wandered out of a world into a book. They were dream people and they were wandering in the pages of a book. They were like black flies and they crawled across the print. . no, it was not print, it was a hard cobbled street winding a little and leading to a shrine. The street climbed the hill and the cobbles hurt the thin soles of Hermione’s still sea-worthless feet. Climbing the street toward a door — a cathedral was it — the voice going on and on making long echoes like some voice “off” in some obvious stage set. The scenery was worn out, obvious. This was never true, could never have been. Livre. “But a livre is a book isn’t it? What is a livre anyhow? Where is that hateful old Dupont creature? She might make herself useful for once. But what a mercy anyhow she’s left.” She was gone, for the nonce (shopping again?) Madame Dupont, cheap mourning and another half-mourning hat (still cheaper) with a spray of artificial half-mourning wheat sheaves on it. They had themselves bought hats, Hermione and the two Rabbs, were now wearing them, Fayne and her mother, Clara they now called her, Clara Rabb and Fayne Rabb and Hermione had bought hats, wonderful hats, soft about their faces, without linings, not so expensive — sans doublure — no, the bigger one. Madame Dupont had helped them, helped them buy exquisite wide straw hats for something about three francs, very extravagant Madame Dupont had said, harrowing the dumpy little milliner’s assistant who might have been Boule de Souife come to life only she had such odd tobacco coloured eyes such white skin, somehow dumpy but with white skin like a magnolia. A common girl in a little back-water of a shop, draper’s assistant and the masts of the boats showing through the uneven squares of the narrow window over the counters of cheap calico and bunches of artificial cherries and plum and magenta ribbons. Boule de Souife. Hermione had whispered “Boule de Souife” and Madame Dupont had dropped the bunch of magenta bignonias she had almost bought instead of the half mourning wheat sheaves to exclaim, “what, but Mademoiselle, you don’t know what you’re saying.” “I wasn’t saying anything. Only remembering—” “You picked up strange ideas in your French studies. You seem to have been oddly coached.” Coached. Where had she got that word? Her husband the new American-French one, had learnt his English in Oxford. Coached. “You mean — taught?” “Taught. Yes. What did I say?” “I don’t know — please don’t be upset, Madame Dupont. It’s France simply.” “I can’t see that there’s anything for
Havre. This was Havre, Havre. Havre. Small boys looking like thin anaemic little girls dressed up in tight short hideous unbecoming little trousers, with curls (some of them) shouting after them, “Engl-eesh. Engl-eeesh. Beef-steak.” “O Clara they think we’re Engl-eesh.” The little boys had persisted and shouted until Hermione had
The sunset even like last night, faint flamingo rose touching the sails in the little clean salt-water canal like roses on snow. And the Breton hats, children even, little girls in gull-wing hats. They must wear them. They must wear them. They say it’s for good luck. Someone had told her. Where? Was it Pierre Loti? Something had come true again anyhow, something one had read came true. . Pierre Loti most likely, even the little girls, babies even, wear the gull winged bonnets for good luck.
Sailors like Pêcheur d’Islande with red pom-poms so odd on their blue tam o’shanters that they call berets. O France let me die here, let me die, press me to you, beautiful book, a flower’s leaf floated here by chance, a moth with dried wings spread out. . between your vivid pages.
“Did she die here?” O, but she couldn’t, she couldn’t have died, the smoke wreathing in its hideous obscene whirl upward across these (perhaps) very roofs. “I can’t believe that she died here.” But O horrible, horrible suppose it had never happened. Suppose that it was going to happen. For it never could have happened, but it was true. But it could never really have happened. O it was only a story they told us like old King Cole and the Seven Sisters and the prince who turned into a frog. Frog. Frog. It was only a frog story without even the Black Forest intense wood-reality of Grimms tales. It was not even a legend out of the woods, not a real fairy-story. Something made up and French story books were never any good. So it wasn’t true. It was a bad story. On the floor. Here, here it was they
And Madame Dupont, saying good-bye at Havre, said they must come here, putting them on the boat, the river boat, because it was cheaper. For one had to see something. One came to France to see something — but why this? Why had she come to France? It was only a story like the Seven Sisters or was it the Seven Brothers turning into Swans; it was only a story like the little Mermaid who wanted feet. O God, God and she died for it wanting feet. O God don’t you see, it was something real that happened. It was written on the pavement with the date, a circle and the French words. One dared not read them. Not even herself
Heat roasting from the pavement. Heat with black devil wings to catch her. Christ in Heaven keep Jeanne d’Arc safe for ever.
Christ in Heaven, Christ in Heaven, reconcile these things in our hearts. Christ in Heaven stoop low and shelter Athene who is after all only a girl and the Corinthians spoke of idols of silver, idols of gold, O Christ, Christ let me bring you every conceivable kind of lily. . “Yes, Mrs. Rabb. . Clara. I do think the baptismal fount is lovely and the Fennels, you know of the Art Academy (yes he is
Lady if you are a lady though they said you had one illegitimate child whom they called God, listen to me. Are you really a creature to bring and alleviate people’s odd numbing blackness? Are you really a mother and would you really understand? I always think the most awful thing in the world to be would be to be the mother of God. But maybe that’s because I’m afraid. George said there needn’t be any children. Must I ever, should I ever have one? George Lowndes said I would look like Maria della something or other, he was always rubbing in his filthy old Italians. Italians crowded the steerage of rotten second class boats. . but they aren’t the same. Something tells me, Lady mea gratia, beata or whatever they are calling you that in Italy the mother of God is different. George. . pearls on her gown. It is hemmed and she wears pearls. Florence is (Browning says orris root or doesn’t he?) and pearls are wound round and round the diadem of the baby that hadn’t even the dirty ragged pieces of a rose. Not a petal of a rose. Is that what you are meant for, beata domina regina or whatever they are calling you? Incense to numb out your pain but Christ wouldn’t take the sponge (O why, why didn’t he?) they offered Him. Chloroform I read in the Materia Medica doesn’t always help though sometimes — don’t let me scream. Don’t let me die. Perhaps it’s my Hell and must we all pass through it to get to meadows thick with water lilies? Meadows, thick with iris,
“I never saw one
“The thing to do is to put on all the lights.” “Well, Pauline, Paulet” (Clara
“News from home — news from home — must go — Rouen lovely. Yes, we love your city. And couldn’t you, please, please, please garçon get us some hot milk and coffee, O please, please. I’m too tired to explain. No my friends aren’t ill simply — well to tell you the truth — we were kept awake — all night. Yes simply eaten.” “But who Mademoiselle could eat you?” “It was
Two francs on the edge of the table. A shaft of light on the floor like light falling on an Easter morning altar. The sudden brilliance that was like the falling (oddly not the rising) of a golden curtain. Cloth of gold was suspended for a moment and then rolled a suitable background. A thin face was poised against that background. It might have risen from a pleated ruff. It might have kissed a sword hilt, a sword hilt set with brilliants, and knelt and laid the sword at her feet. A flower. Dawn. Rouen. This would never happen again. It would be always happening. This had never happened. When was it? Yesterday. “Yesterday is to-morrow.” “Mademoiselle’s French is charming (I will bring the small breads) but not always quite fresh.”
2
“She’s like a great yellow rose though I don’t believe I am in love with her—” “Wh-aat?” “I mean the Correggio there is like a — like a — I mean I don’t think if I were the faun I would be in love with — in love with—” “What’s all this talk of being in love with, silly?” “I was talking to Clara.
O let me alone. God. God. This is worse than Cathedrals. Let me alone. Let me find for myself. Get away. Get lost. People going away and the Louvre getting empty. Cool. Long cold galleries and downstairs the marbles like ice, cut like ice, holding something in their shapes that people didn’t see, couldn’t see or they would go mad with it. Not always the most beautiful things, slid thus through the breasts of the Venus de Milo from the bench in the corner (the red plush bench, shabby against the wall) showed like two thin knife edges, edges of the crescent moon. The Venus de Milo was a little heavy but if you prowled and prowled and waited for different days, little effects of shadow and light and half light caught you; depending on how empty or how full the room was, you got caught by something. That was the answer to prayer. Prayer was asking, asking. Prayer was asking for something that was so terrible and so necessary that you had no words to ask for it. When you found the words, the prayer was already a faded thing. A prayer with words was like a plucked flower. Prayer without words was growing deep, deep in the ground, in the heart of everything. If you found words for your prayer, you had already separated your prayer from the thing you prayed to. Prayer, sitting on the shabby little bench in the corner listening to the guide explaining to the party from Kansas, wasn’t in words. The guide was saying “and here ladies and gentlemen in the glass case at the left” (he never varied his formula) “you have the authentic fragment of the foot, the bit of the hand and the arm and the lost apple.” How do you know it is an apple, how can you tell it is her hand or her foot? You can’t but nobody ever asked such simple questions. They accepted the dogma as good presbyterians, good methodists, good nonconformists or even good catholics have a way of doing without question, without grace or without bickering. How did they come to do it? Religion of love-of-beauty wasn’t this thing. But still they wanted something, looked for something. O God don’t let me pity them, looking all lost towards a Cook’s Guide for beauty. Let me not despise or pity nor patronize them for your ways are inscrutable and when you led the fingers of Phidias along those two crescents, you already had my hands in yours. I can’t put it into words. You know what I’m saying. Before Phidias was, I am. Long ago when you struck white lightning from marble you had some of us already with you. No. I didn’t ever forget. Don’t let me go mad with this my first discovery. But I will — I will — I will go mad unless I go upstairs and look at Leonardo, look at Correggio, look at Fra Angelico. They are the most blatant shams. They are a curtain hiding reality.
Is Christianity then that? Is Christ the soft mist, the blue smoke of altar incense hiding the beauty of the thing itself? Is Christianity then that, at its best, a curtain, woven of most delicate stuffs to hide reality, the white flame that is Delphi, that is Athens?
O God, they don’t even know about it. Not even the Rabbs. Fayne doesn’t really know. Fayne reads Dante and thinks it’s real when it is a circle upon circle to numb the senses, like light reflected from bright mirrors that deflects, that blinds one’s eyes with its dazzle but that really hides the image. The image of truth, of beauty is in this marble bowl forever. . a Grecian urn. Where is he, Keats of that somewhat washed out ode? Let me get to him. Hands in yours, Phidias’ and mine. . You held our fingers in yours. We are your fingers. Athene’s hands wove, wove and she was the goddess of the artisan. Sculpture. Let me creep along your corridors. O God. If only I could come here at night when it’s empty and speak with you. . “Clara, yes, certainly. I was sitting downstairs to keep cool. All these pictures
“Well, why don’t you want to go to Versailles?” “I don’t. I mean I do want to sometime. Why must we go so soon? Why must we go at all. . O all right.” Versailles. O well if we have to but can’t we stay in the garden. Some days, certain days a week, once a month or something the fountains play. You have to come when the fountains are playing. It’s no good ordinary times. But then its full of people. Fountains. Long corridors. Horrible to think that Marie Antoinette
3
“But
O Walter, Walter how kind of you to have asked us here. Walter suavity, fragrance (can a man be fragrant?). O Walter you are like great dog-wood trees, men are trees sometimes. But what makes me so happy is that you don’t seem to care, don’t seem to mind our being hot and draggled and after all not asking any odd questions, not thinking anything odd, just greeting one as if it were at Mrs. de Raub’s without surprise, bursting into French (exquisite French) and then going on and on, talking as if time never existed and “would you like, Hermione, to hear some more music?” Asking her if she would like some more music, not making any intermediate enquiries for what was there else to ask? “Hermione do you think there is more of the sea in this — ruuuuuuuuuuu — or this uuuurrrr—” “How can I tell, Walter? I think the other one, no not that one, has more of the idea but you see I don’t know much about music.” “No. Sit still. don’t move. I can play things, make things come right when you are listening.” Walter. Walter. No intermediate jangling of looking as if her face needed washing not caring that her arms were full of dusty wilted peonies. “But
But this is worse than anything I have ever done or seen or thought of. Sitting quite still and as if something back of me were just simply using me, using me to get to Walter. Walter with his head bent in the dusk and Fayne sobbing (yes she’s actually crying) and Mrs. Rabb, poor Clara, sitting white and still and getting more white and being braver than Fayne really who was crying. I have to endure. It’s almost as if you, Clara, understood what I was, am going through. No, its no use. Things just don’t happen anyhow. Walter’s grandfather invented the Morse code and my father is the Gart formula and poor Bertrand. Things don’t just happen. There is a sort of aristocracy of the spirit. But you are stronger than I and O Walter poor little Walter they started you when you were three. Things don’t just happen. Art is sweating and going blind with agony. If I weren’t so sorry, didn’t feel you so much Walter, I couldn’t myself sit so still here, not saying anything afraid lest for some little breath I might move in some way, get out of key with something and the message wouldn’t get through. Morse code. I am a wire simply. But one doesn’t really choose casual instruments. But you Walter, they put you to school when you were three and don’t you see, all my life it’s killed me, this that they didn’t teach me something when I was three. But it doesn’t matter. Things don’t just happen and if I can’t play it makes it better for you, for just this moment. I am crucified for you and you for the thing beyond me that is getting through to you. Is this your own music Walter? But it isn’t music. Light outside, still able to see, glim and glim and another glim for someone was lighting up and they called Walter (the little children in the street — he said)
Of course the thing is terrible but it isn’t your fault and it isn’t my fault and it’s got to be borne. Windows facing east, west and south. Southern windows. No, there is no southern window in this music. Giving us little cakes and calling downstairs in exquisite French and someone running up, his old concierge he said, going out again, coming back with a beautiful shiny loaf like a loaf in a Rallac drawing
What a nice little house. What a dear little lady. What an odd little lady looking so smart and somehow not at all the sort of thing you would ever in your mind remotely (ever and ever so remotely) associate with Walter. “O Mademoiselle Raigneau. It was ever so kind of you—” “Then you are—
Tiny exquisite room. This was the “friends” up the street. All arranged. Fayne Rabb and Clara rather hurt. “But he wants me to see them alone.” “Them? Are there others?” “Others than what?” “Why than this — some woman I suppose he’s got entangled with?” “No. Friends of his. The Raigneaus. I don’t know who exactly. People who
“You didn’t bring your friends?” “Walter thought there would be too many. I will, if I may sometime. I don’t suppose you’d care to come to see—
Now they were playing together. Candles on the Louis something or other table burning with round little blobs of light. The candle flames looked round blobs of light like dandelion puffs with the sun shining on them, not clear and cold or turned knife edges away from a breeze like in Walter’s studio. The very quality of people determines the way their candles burn. This was a discovery. The walls melted away and were broken and cut with heavily framed rather over-luxurious paintings. Certainly French school, good paintings, might have been in some little obscure room of the Louvre. Very late French. Vérenè’s father had a picture in the Luxembourg. This was really people who
4
“You’re exaltée. You saw him alone.” “O, no, no, no, no, no. How could I see him alone?” “What’s easier? You tell us he asked you to meet friends of his. You don’t ask us to come along. You disappear at three, saying the friends asked you to early tea and hear music. You come home at — heaven knows what hour — and in Paris. Alone.” “I wasn’t alone.” “Well there you are. I suppose in all decency he would have to see you back at two in the morning.” “It wasn’t two in the morning.” “Wasn’t it?” “Was it?” “Well, you ought to know.”
Was it two in the morning? Odd white mist rising from a silver river, far and far and rather cold stars. Stars in France are oddly rather cold, taking on a sort of artificial glamour like diamond stars on kings’ breasts. “Isn’t it odd even the stars looking different?” “Stars?” “I mean over the river.” “So you stood and star-gazed on the Seine.” “Ever so long. He started telling me about Debussy. It was so odd. The gold fish, you know that thing he plays us and the castle under the sea, he knows all about them. Debussy says Walter is the only person who can play his music.” “So you talked of Debussy. And what else?” “I don’t know. Walter is making drawings, so exquisite of harps and things—” “
But I care more about Greek than Egypt. Walter says it’s all wrong but that I personally am all right, limited — and don’t understand — couldn’t be expected to understand — the
Vérenè. Vérenè. Vérenè. Was it a name. Was it a person. O, yes it was a person. It was herself and Fayne and Walter who were somehow out of it, out of the picture, out of drawing. Drawing. How odd that he should draw so beautifully. “Look, Fayne. He gave me this.” Fayne took the bit of paper, held it to the light. “I think he must have traced it from a book.” “No. Look, Fay. It’s one of the things in the big case in the Egyptian room we were looking at the other day. A sort of harp arrangement; don’t you remember. They had it propped up against a lovely chair that looked quite new, quite a comfortable new chair with no back and odd arms and the seat sagging just as if it had been sat in.” “Yes, I remember the chair.” “Well, Walter drew the chair and the harp and put the person there in the chair to play the harp.” “But he copied it, I tell you out of a book.” “No. No, he didn’t. You can see it’s the same chair and the person playing the harp—” “It’s you, I suppose.” “He didn’t say so. . saying I’m too Greek and that he doesn’t care for Greek things and that I don’t understand. I think it’s someone else or no one at all.” “O, it’s you all right.” “But he keeps telling me I’m too Greek — not understanding—” “Does he
Let’s destroy things. Build them up and destroy them. Wasn’t that their attitude? Walter had reached perfection of a technical order. Therefore he must reach beyond it, destroy in a gesture his exquisite technique, his music flowing like water, a technique that Debussy said he himself couldn’t cope with. Walter must play his music, play it the first time to let him (Debussy) see how it went. Walter playing to her, “but I want to know what
Are we ahead then of people? O this is horrible. What will people think 1922 or 1932 some great age like that, ten, twenty, thirty years from this year? They will catch us when they know that we are ahead of them. Bash out our brains. Stench of flesh roasting, roasting fumes rising above Rouen. Lilies and the Magdalene looking for the Lover. My Lord, my Lover. How odd. My Lover. You would love us all alike, making no difference, reaching us telepathically, men and women alike, both the same, simply a matter of telepathic rays or X rays or something. Christ seeing colours. Walter would be white, trimmed with blue, a terrible blue. Heat when it gets too hot becomes white, then violet. See Chemistry for Beginners. Does cold, then by the same scientific logic become something other, blue, when it becomes too cold? The cold of Walter that commences by being just cold, the soft cold of snow, soft and of the quality of a moths breast, becomes toward the edges more cold. A cold, people can’t bear. Walter knows people can’t bear him that’s why he hates them, hates them, apologetically closing the window. “We sometimes collect a crowd here and the gendarme doesn’t like it.” Shutting the window not so much against them as against himself. Byronic smile. Collar loosened. Walter shutting the window. “Now what would you like me to play you?” Asking them, waiting actually for an answer. Chopin. Chopin, the de Musset of music. Playing them Chopin.
Swans, a clear surface green lake. Nothing in the lake, no horror, no little mermaid crying for a human lover. Give me your voice and I will give you feet. The old witch under the sea asked the little Mermaid for her voice and in return she would have feet and then she could walk the earth as others and find her human lover. But we don’t fortunately want human lovers. Does Walter really want Vérenè? He thinks he does. It keeps him from rising up, up toward the surface of the sea. It keeps him down, down among the rose coloured bushes to love Vérenè. He is kept down by this love for he would go mad (and he knows it) if he rose to the surface of his consciousness, really heard the voices he is so bent on hearing. Music. Was Vérenè’s cello really music? Not in that sense, not in their sense. It was music of another order. Not of the Morse code Gart formula order. Not of the order of the music of the spheres and Plato actually getting the thing down, making the exact statement, the formula, giving them numbers and figures and
It appears that there is a world within a world. We all live in some world (or several) but Christ lived in all. This is odd. Going on and on and on. The world of bed-bugs, of the stench of the stagnant water in the tooth-brush tumbler where she had stuffed the already half-wilted stems of the odd orange striped lilies she had some days ago bargained for in the Quai aux Fleurs. Throw the water away. Fresh water. Rinse out the tooth brush cup and find something else. But what else is there? The tea pot they had bought for their own teas at home, no not the pot, we’ll need it. Bother. Orange striped small lilies in a tooth brush tumbler. That’s our life here. But I don’t care. I love it. I love the sordid touch with Clara and Fayne Rabb. It gives character, poignancy and point to all this. And we live on nothing. I will have all that extra money and when they write me to come back, I shall just stay on. Of course, I know I can’t go back. I’d rather be a girl in a shop, rather scrub out hospital wards than go back. O, no, no, no, no. Du bist die Run’, du bist der Friede. O God why didn’t they really let me sing or something and that old Madame Terrone at Mrs. Merrick’s said she would take me for nothing. Funny old thing with huge chest and odd yellow teeth and a huge démodé pompadour and a voice that made you crouch low in your chair and pray to be dead. She sang the Erlkönig and I knew I would go mad for hers wasn’t an opera voice, everybody said so, but people begged her, prayed and implored but she wouldn’t take their daughters. “You have a quality in your voice. I would make you a good singer but only of chamber music, you understand. I will take you for nothing. Who are you?” “My — father — is a — a—professor of — of theorems and things. I don’t think I care for. . music.”
5
“I can never make out whether Walter’s a second rate Olympian or a first rate demi-god.” “No George.” “I can never make out whether his music has got him or he has got his music.” “Yes, George.” “And on the other hand, I can never see whether that little black beetle of a woman has entangled him or whether he really wants to marry her.” “Marry her, George?” “Yes. What do you think Dryad.”
“I don’t know what I think George. It seemed a matter of — of—” “Why don’t you ever achieve your utterances. You are an oracle manqué.” “Perhaps George, the — the — worshipper — I mean—” “Well, what
“But I thought you were engaged to him” stormed Fayne Rabb “and then I thought you broke it off.” “I was engaged to him.” “Well, you don’t after you are engaged to people and then break it off, see them again, do you Madre? What would her mother think?” This was the first time in some weeks that Fayne Rabb had mentioned (ever so distantly) Eugenia. Clara as her way was, went on sewing. Leaves from Bloomsbury sycamores drifted down making a premature autumn. “
Should she. Shouldn’t she. One I love, two I love. “Clara, I have found the very exact shade you’re looking for.” “Hermione, I wish Paulet would be as interested in her things as you are. All so neat.” “No. It was mama — Eugenia who prepared my little work bag. Things I’d never think of. My mother you know. I call her Eugenia except when I’m at home. She’s mama at home.” “Why, pray, Eugenia?” “It’s her name. My grandfather had a sort of adoration for the empress—” “Empress?” “Eugénie.”
Should she. Shouldn’t she. Leaves prematurely drifting down from tall peeling sycamores. Strange scent of sun-burnt sycamores (that was a rare hot early autumn) and the odd curious cut-off feeling like being in a birds cage, high up above the old square with the corner going on and the other corner going on. The corners seemed to be separated, odd square boat hulks stranded there, all so quiet, rumble in the distance, rumble, rumble, the eternal rumble of London. Cut apart in their little back-water. Bloomsbury.
“Well but if you have broken it finally — off—” “Well. I mean, we did. I mean he did. Then he came back and we got engaged again.” “Well that alters everything.” “I mean we got engaged then we — I mean he — no it was I this time — I mean
“We’re not engaged, George?” “Gawd forbid.” “I thought you felt that way about it George. Mrs. Merrick and Stephen Merrick sent their love. He expects to be back in Rome in a year or so and wants to see you. Do you like Rome? Or have you ever been there? Everything’s so odd, exciting. I don’t know where I have been. I don’t know where I haven’t. Those pictures in the Louvre transported one and I felt the same way about the Nike. The winged Victory. I told the Rabbs I didn’t. I don’t mean that. What do I mean? I mean seeing the Elgin marbles this morning gave me the same feeling and I didn’t know, don’t know whether I’m in Rome or Paris. I mean the Louvre and the British Museum hold one together, keep one from going to bits. For one is all in bits. I even like awful things, awful (I believe they are awful) like Delacroix and the Lancrets. I saw Napoleon’s snuff box and the Corots. There was a little bad picture of a ship in a storm, simply awful but like one in our attic like Eugenia did once. . but you never liked Eugenia’s funny pictures. I — love — Europe.”
“Its so quaint, she loves London.” “Yes, isn’t it odd — she loves London.” “This is Miss Gart — they call her Her short for Hermione — she loves London.” “O I am — so — glad. Why do you love London?” “O let me really tell you Bertie, that Miss Her Gart loves London. Such a
“This is Miss — O did you know what
Coming across the room, bowing to someone. Someone different, out of something that never was that never could be. It was too bad about Walter, acted as if he were, as if he were something like the first aeroplane ever invented or a dug-up Dinosaur. All hushing down, fluttering down, sinking down into arm-chairs pushed aside and jumbled in little knots, islands of arm-chairs. Walter comes across the room, people fall, all turned toward him, sun-flowers to the sun. Sunflowers to the sun, whispering, whispering “Dowel you know. Only Delia in all London can procure him.” Procure? How did Delia procure Walter? And where was Delia? Hermione had been jostled through crowds of people and hadn’t got near Delia. Delia standing somewhere, somewhere far away, crowds and she was always interrupted, George at her elbow, “no you come here Dryad, here’s another prize specimen.” George produced prize specimens. They cropped up on the stairs, upstairs and when she got upstairs to find Delia George pronounced that Delia had gone downstairs and “you needn’t worry about your book of etiquette, dear Dryad. Don’t be so provincial.” Was it provincial to find Delia, Lillian Merrick’s sister Delia, all mixed up, one with another, the Merricks, school at Rome, people in the legations, poets. Everything at Delia’s was like that. “Where is Delia?” It was George who had told her how to say it. “Don’t be so provincial Dryad. Don’t let me hear you saying Lady Prescott that way again. It’s back-stairs. Everybody calls her Delia.”
Where then was Delia? Delia had invited her. She had had lunch alone with Delia. Delia had said she would be bored with the crush but Walter had asked her to be sure to come. Walter had asked her to come so that he could hate them all in peace and yet play nicely. There was Walter. But she must first find Delia. What an odd Walter, like some one in an elegant Pinero revival, coming forward, one hadn’t even imagined Walter (even) could be so elegant. “Huh,” from George. “Old Forgeron is in fine professional form.” Forgeron came forward, bowing a little. Who was he bowing to, eyes so colourless, amber and flecked grey amber. Walter’s eyes were a brook’s eyes, not a deep wood brook but one that has escaped from a glacier. Warmth came and went in Walter’s eyes, warmth not his own, one felt, but the warmth that came to a glacial stream that runs over clear amber. Walter.
Walter would play now and this was funny She didn’t want to hear Walter play. How odd that she resented Walter, hated even Walter a little. Now she saw, felt with the consciousness of all these people who so hated Walter. Hermione had found in London what all along she knew prophetically she would find. She had sunk (with the first exquisite uprising of early autumn) under, into it. She had sunk into London as one sinks into a down cushion, into a series of excellent down cushions, all blurred, all exquisitely of a piece yet blurred. She had let go her astute hold on things of intellect (even the Elgin marbles) after her first conscientious three weeks. “We’ve seen all London. We’ve seen the Tower.” This seemed to amuse people at Delia’s, other odd people, friends of George’s, of Delia’s, who asked her to their houses. “We’ve seen the Soane museum.” “The what, darling?” (People even in the beginning patronised, petted her.) “Soane. Sir John Soane—” “What?” “Why it’s a little museum with some lovely odd things. Some odd lovely intaglios, cameos and things.” “Where?” “Off — off somewhere off Lincoln’s—” “Not Inn, darling?” “Well, I think so.” “Fancy. The poor darling has been to Lincoln’s Inn. We must rescue her. What brutes her friends are.
“Darling” had been somewhat rescued lately. Too much so. She was tired, getting blurred with it. How could it be otherwise? “I tell you Fayne that you must stay with me.” “I can’t. I can’t leave Madre.”
Fayne Rabb and Clara going home soon. Too late already. They had already out-stayed their time. Boats sailing. Grubby wharfs. Hooting of sirens. O let me shut it all out, all out in Delia’s beauty.
Delia, you are so beautiful. You are beautiful with the rightness that comes with antecedents and with wisdom. Delia you are good. Delia your house is full of everyone from everywhere, you don’t shut out anyone. Funny Delia. “Delia is above suspicion” someone said when someone said, “how odd of Delia to invite that
“O this sort of thing. This always happens,” the voice was going on and Hermione turned to meet a pair of half familiar eyes, yes she had met this somewhere, rather nice with a petunia-coloured hat a little rakish over one eye and enormous jade ear-rings and odd sleek ivory-smooth white hair showing under the hat above the jade ear-rings. Odd, patrician. A petunia. Not a flower of her preference but Hermione liked to see a thing being itself. A petunia. Not a flower of her preference but with an autumn richness, no fragrance, rather heady with all but right, doing the right thing. A petunia would. The petunia seemed to know everyone, seemed to know everything. “Dear Redforth, a shocking woman. Now you watch. For two bob, our demi-god will stalk out. You wait and see if he doesn’t. He told old Langstreath that he wouldn’t be found dead in her house again. Shocking old snob. She had asked Dalborough to drop in and he
The Dalton woman and the petunia were both forgotten. Waves of cold mountain water had extinguished them. There was no colour where this was. The music was transparent. Who said there was colour in music? Someone, somewhere. People now were always saying it. Colour in music, tones, sound in pictures. Colour. There was no colour in this thing.
Back of the piano where the curtain of gold gauze shut out or lured in the most tender of silver mists, back of the gold curtain that was a gold net under the sea, to lure, to entrap, back of the curtain, no before the curtain, water welled up, up, up. It welled in bubbling sound. This was not the sea-floor. There were bits of coral to be sure — but that was the odd earring turned toward her of someone — the Dalton woman? — while the other ear (whose?) was turned to catch the music. Ears. Ears. Ears. There were ears tilted up, ears tilted down, ears side-ways. Ears were shells, were flowers, and into those ears (impersonal ears) the music poured and flowed, impersonal, everyone might listen, Hermione, the Dalton woman. Delia. This was Delia’s concert. Anyone might listen for Delia being above suspicion might have anyone in to listen. Going on and on. A fountain of icy water that bubbled up from a sea floor. Arethusa was a fountain that ran under the sea, ran under the sea from Italy (or Greece was it?) straight to Sicily. Sicily. A fountain in Sicily. There were hot banks of fruit, almonds, hot grapes, petunia-coloured grapes and purple figs. Walter had nothing to do with them. He was the water simply that welled up and up. Up and up. He was the water simply. Fresh water, mountain water that ran and ran and ran. . people were ears simply. People weren’t people. Odd ears. To be washed. O
Petunias. Hydrangeas. Hydrangeas artificially coloured, mauve (a word she didn’t like but it expressed the other odd woman who had found the ices frizzy. “No, I don’t like them. I find them awfully frizzy.” What ever did the little fool mean?) and the short thick-set man with the monocle—“no not that one, I mean the other one. Not that brute, I mean the one by the window.” But it seemed the one by the window who was leaning toward someone and whispering (why were they all, always surreptitiously whispering) was no more distinguished nor distinguishable from the other, the other one whose monocle was an inch thick, “ought to be an emerald, poor old Caesar.” “You mean Nero.” “I don’t mean either Celandine.” “My name’s
The Violet of the piece was having hair pins rescued for her. “These jade things will spill.” “You shouldn’t wear jade hair-pins. It’s pre-posterous.” “Yes. Isn’t it. But I won them on a bet—” “A?” “Actually. I won them, and I wear them.” “You lose them you mean. Crawl under the arm-chair Teddy, that’s a darling. No. That’s a house-maid’s hair pin.” “Maybe it’s De-li-a’s.” “Delicious Delia. No. It is quite unworthy. Now why is Delia right and why is Mrs. Shoddy Percy there wrong? They both got their gowns at Berrys.” “Brute.”
They didn’t. They did. “Why look at the V cut as no one else does.” “And the X and the Y and the Z.” “One doesn’t Teddy have a Z on one’s gowns.” “What then Vi-o-let, does one have it on?” “On?” “I mean Vi dear — off—” “Look Teddie. There’s that parasite Jerry Walton. They say he killed his father.” “Really? How interesting. But is it only a rumour?” “No. Solid fact. Poor darling. It meant
O Fay, where are you dear? Look at the dear people, the funny people, the witty people. There seems no one sad at all, only someone who has broken a lorgnette, poor darling, she holds it up for everyone to see and only half the people care. O but we do care. Don’t cry over it. One can see it’s tortoise shell and set with tiny brilliants. Is it a crest or just your odd initials? What can her name be? O names. People. Charming people. Charming names. “Miss Her Gart, what a quaint, dear person. Little Miss Her Gart you know from Philadelphia.” “From what — ever?” “A place in the Bible, didn’t you know. And unto the angel in Philadelphia, write — Delia’s sister lives there.” “In Asia Minor did you say.” Excavations, yes. Something or other about Rome. Not legations. No. Yes, I think so. Freddie’s bound to do it. Came a cropper last time. “Delia.”
Delia was coming forward and people were saying “Delia.” They said Delia up the scale, down the scale, with grace-notes, with variations on a theme. “You are a real pet” and “won’t you come tomorrow.” “The Vinney woman, no one ever saw her—” and “Delia. I know you hate them—” but—“Delia, not that Oxford frump, no not really—” and “Delia. Delia. Delia à bientôt.”
A bientôt, Delia, Delia, Delia. Delia à bientôt. “And that means soon, soon, Delia.” “But you’re not going
“Delia?” “Darling?” “You don’t mind my asking—” “Ask anything, darling.” “I mean Lillian talked about it — seemed to — want — them.” “Dear, dear Dryad — now what?” “I mean people
6
“You’re odd here, you’re a great success here, but you don’t dress right.” “No.” “I said I don’t like that grey chiffon, it’s too nun-ish. Maybe all right for Philadelphia.” “Yes.” “I said you have to have more body to your clothes. Colour.” “Yes.” “Yes. No. Yes. Have you heard a word I’m saying?” “No. I mean yes.” “Yes, I mean no. What in Hell’s name do you mean?” “I mean really, George, does it at all really matter?”
“Well, I as your nearest male relative—” George didn’t like her. Not like her as he did in Eugenia’s little morning room that he had said (with a snort) might almost be in Chelsea. “You don’t like me here, George?” “Wh-aat?” “You don’t (in London) like me.” “I didn’t say that. I think you’re in bad hands. You keep bad company.” “Bad company — Delia?” “Delia. No not delicious Delia. Delia is Hera after a cure. Juno with all the grandeurs and no fat. Delia is the immortal Artemis garbed in violet, in the violet-woven veil of Aphrodite. Delia is a second Helen come to judgment—” “You do understand, Georgio.” “That’s what I’m here for, Dryad.” “Then who, what? What bad company? Don’t you like that Dalton woman that Delia asked to meet me?” “May I ask
“I don’t know what I think dear George. I saw her face over the back of a Chesterfield and hated her.” “Hated her? Why Dryad?” “I don’t know. Something she said about Walter.” “What Dryad?” “She said she wanted to turn and turn a steel knife in his heart and say
“Then Fayne, it’s merely a matter of finances?” “That chiefly. It always has been. We would go without anything to eat (properly) for two days and then grandame would descend on us with out of season hot-house grapes. That’s been our life.” “Well, I can see your point. But as far as Clara is concerned you’re making a mistake. You’re grown up. She is. She is petting you, keeping you back. She is arresting your development. You are a case particularly poignant, of arrested development.” “My dear Dryad (I believe that is what they call you) who’s been talking then?” “No one. No one in particular. It’s in the air. I know what I mean. I knew in Philadelphia. You expected me to stand up to Eugenia. I told you I had done it. You spoke patronizingly of Eugenia, patronized my effort as if it had been nothing. I tell you it broke my heart to break hers.” “Don’t talk that way. Your mother has your father. Your brother.” “That makes no difference. That made it worse in a way. I was the only girl.” “So am I. I am the only one at all, anyway.” “I know that and I wouldn’t go on this way, have gone on at all like this if you hadn’t started it. Don’t you remember that night in Paris—” “Nights in Paris. Nights o’ Paris. O
“I’ve broken her heart. She’s got other things, other people. She’s even altering, wants to cross next autumn if I stay on.” “Then how about me? There’d be no place for me. You have your friends.” “Not as I want. Not as I need them. I want a little flat in Chelsea. Delia would help me. Delia would be everything correct, convenable, comme il faut, you know all that—” “You’d use your — Delia as you call her for a screen?” “A screen? For what pray?” “For us.” “Us? We don’t need to be screened. What have we done or could we do to need any apology or explanation? I am burning away that’s all. The clear gem-like flame. I don’t want you to miss it. I’m going to write, work. You could. George took your poems to send to the Lyre, not mine.” “The Lyre (or is it the Lark?) is a rotten little decadent rag—” “No it isn’t. Delia says it isn’t. It’s quite representative and good and George has been offered some job on it. George Lowndes will have some job, help us.” “I don’t understand your wanting George—” “I don’t. I haven’t. But George says he’ll help us if we stay here.” “I thought George hated me.” “He does rather.” “Then why help — us?” “He says we’re like a vision of Theocritus — though he doesn’t approve.” “O
“I, Hermione, tell you I love you Fayne Rabb. Men and women will come and say I love you. I love you Hermione, you Fayne. Men will say I love you Hermione but will anyone ever say I love you Fayne as I say it? Men and women wander from caves into the light and in the caves little bare children tug at the teats of wolves. Romulus. Rome. I think never in the world will such children live, live again as live in my thoughts, my heart. I don’t want to be (as they say crudely) a boy. Nor do I want you to so be. I don’t feel a girl. What is all this trash of Sappho? None of that seems real, to (in any way) matter. I see you. I feel you. My pulse runs swiftly. My brain reaches some height of delirium. Do people say it’s indecent? Maybe it is. I can’t hear now, see any more, people. Some are kind, some aren’t. That’s all the division I can ever have between them. . Hermione. My grandfather read Shakespeare — that’s why, Hermione. But that’s not me. That’s not me. They can laugh if they want cry if they want, become rhapsodic over Her Gart, Hermione Gart or Hermione. But I’m something different. It’s nothing to do with them. I’m something else. Different. You Fayne know that. Perhaps you are the first one at all to know it. I know that Shakespeare is real.
“Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers—” “Yes, it appears so. But I’ll go on talking. We are legitimate children. We are children of the Rossettis, of Burne Jones, of Swinburne. We were in the thoughts of Wilde when he spoke late at night of carts rumbling past the window, fresh with farm produce on the way to Covent Garden. He was talking to a young man called Gilbert. They talked of Greeks and flowers. Do people talk that way? None I know. They are witty but always with decoration back of it. (Nor Delia.) London repudiated the rhododendron beauty of those people. Or outgrew it. There will be, I am sure, others. We belong here. Not in Paris. Here. Paris is the sharp sword of perfection. Paris knows her beauty. Paris is no slut, no prostitute. Not even demi-mondaine. People go there for those things and find them. That sort of people could find just as well what they go to Paris to find in New York, Little Rock or Minneapolis. Paris is something different. France is. You say France and something stirs in the air. Flakes and specks of electric power take form and are directed. Paris is back of thought directing it. Paris is, I tell you, Athens. Rome is London. New York is Alexandria. They, Rome, Athens, Alexandria are living in these cities. The saffron clothed Chrysis climbed the wharf at Alexandria. I don’t want to be that. Nor have you that. Is Plato the only one who understood this? O Christ also. Love is enfolding one, all of one. Light that shoots about ones brow like a saint’s halo. Sometimes I could catch you in a mood and freeze you and keep you safe forever. Other times you have destroyed, you are afraid. You are not whole. Not a perfect person. Walter is. George understands things but he bickers. Trifles. But George is kind. I love George when he is kind but I would love him better if he loved you. Clara is stiff with some rigid family complex. Or is it that she really did run away and have you? Is your story right? Did she run away and are you some half-creature, really soulless, of the wood and river?
“If Peter Piper picked the peck of pickled peppers then where is the peck of pickled peppers that Peter Piper picked?” “I don’t know Fayne Rabb but your silliness is unworthy of you. You are a Diadumenos, with a clown’s face. You are Hyacinth mired with horror. Hyacinth was a strong boy not a pimp. You make beauty a fool’s bladder. Bladder. Yes that thing like a balloon blown up for fools to play indecent jibes with. You are the youth of the god Hermes, but you have neither wand nor wings nor sandals. You are Hermes turning from the high ladder of Heaven solely to the underworld. Hermes led dead men across Styx. You are that river.”
7
“Almost thou persuadest me to be a heathen.” Who said that? Who was talking? Fayne had said something like that. It was Fayne who had first said it. Was it a joke she had picked up from George or was George saying something he had heard from Fay? “Almost thou persuadest me—” George was bending down between two incredibly tall candle sticks to turn a page. What page? All France is a book. Brrr sous la livre. A livre. A book. No it was a
Voices. Notes. The voices were stopping out of some sort of politeness for George had turned. The two candles flared in exact symmetry and George (as Hermione twisted on the pouffe to watch him) stood in amazing radiance like some pre quattro-cento saint before an altar. Or was it Signorelli? Taddeo Gaddi. George brought to mind these perfect compositions though he himself was rough a little, a little too rough, something powerful and strong in old George though people had a way of sniggering, “decadent.” What was decadent? Not George. Facing them with his head flung back, with his excellent throat emerging from his loose collar, George tossed back a petulant lock. Began: “Sith when I met thee in thy bark of painted sandal wood.” He went on for some time in that strain and as he reached the pause at the end of what appeared to be the fiftieth line (though in all conscience it must have been about the fifth) the other protagonist began deep harp-like notes, strumming on the piano deep well ordered, well ordained notes yet futile. The producer of the notes was no amateur nor was George yet the effect was amateurish. George had hair the colour of autumn grapes, red grapes in the sun. The lights across the petulant locks of George made a picture. It was too strong, too forthright to be Italian. Late perhaps. Venetian. Tall candles and a mop of fleece. Veronese. The notes began what was presumably a prelude to the next stanza. And George discontinued.
“Odd fellow. Lowndes. Quaint fellow Lowndes.” The voice was slightly patronizing. “Always think of the first time I met him. It was at Prescott’s. They were handing around the fruit and old Hawky said ‘George, a pear or a peach’ and George said ‘neither thank you, nor a pomegranate’—” It was going on. Odd notes. The hands that swung back and forth, right and left were trained, actual musician hands. What was wrong with the whole thing? O but don’t criticize. Don’t think, Hermione. Let it go on, on, on. Voices like music. Music like voices. No art defined here, not stark outstanding terror of Beauty. Candles that make incomparable shadows not the dandelion puffs of Vérènes rooms on the Avenue de Clichy. The river. The Seine. The Thames. London. Going on and on and on. Other people drifting. Other people leaving. It was late, not late enough, too late. “Dryad.” “Yes — George?” “Dreaming, Dryad? Did you like the opus?” “Whose George?” “Mine, dearest Dryad. I thought myself quite fetching.” “Fetching yes. You seem to have fetched everybody.” “Why this petulance, Dryad?” “Jealous, I suppose.” “Why Dryad?” “I should like to be — somebody.” “What are you now Dryad?” But how tell him? What are you now Dryad? I am something like a magic lantern sheet and on it the most horrible of dreary pictures. There is a town called Liverpool and miles of black docks. Rain. And rain. And rain. That is Liverpool. Trains hoot and trains rumble and somebody says “miss hurry off here the first bell’s sounded.” Climb up and up and up long stairs, nice walls, I suppose but how horrible. This is not a boat. This is not a boat. This is to boats what other music is to Walter’s music. “Yes, Clara I think it so much more sensible to have come third on a huge boat than to risk the winter storms on one like we had. You
Boats hooting. The very gulls drab and with soot-coloured feathers. Buoys bobbing like dead men in the stagnant water. Rain dripping. It’s going thank God. Thank God. “Did you say something?” A voice she recognised, a voice she knew, had always somehow, somewhere known, a voice that seemed to mean nothing but that gave her the sense of things inexpressible behind it. “O nothing much. I was thinking of some — people.” “Friends, enemies, idiots, saints or devils?” “Some of those things. Most of those things. I don’t know. Yes, all of those things.” “At once or at different times and how often?” “O, at once and at different times and sometimes all together and I think always.” “Like when is a monkey a barber and how many times would a wood-chuck chuck?” “Something like that.” “Is there an answer then?” “I don’t think so.” “But there must be. Now think hard. Anyhow tea-cakes help the brain. More tea?” “I hadn’t wanted it.” “Hadn’t. We all felt that way. But after hearing dear old Lowndes and that fragrant cedar wood, we all (I speak for the committee) feel somewhat blind-O.” “Blind-O — what?” “Famished. Starved. Hungry. I myself eat nothing for ten days and then eat.” “Is the ten days up then?” “No. It begins to-morrow.” “Why
“So you’ve found each other?” It was George speaking. “Found who? What other?” “Each — the other. I’ve been making a most careful cal-
“Then you know Darrington?” “Yes, I think so.” “You can’t think you know a person. You know or don’t know.
The small slim creature quivered a small slim back, slim and excellently tailored in dark sleek very deep maroon red. A sort of very dark dahlia colour. The head bent back against the wall, and the small body curled nearer, neater into the black and gold enormous Japanese embroidered cushion. The creature turned its back utterly on Hermione. This was casual, rude really. Who was this curled, defiant (yet somehow with all the casual air of knowing what it was up to), beside George Lowndes? Hermione felt for the first time in some time, a little gasp of terror. Really terror. Did she still love George Lowndes?
What was one to do? Should one ignore the creature? Its voice purred into George’s ear. “So quaint of you dearest to read
Two of them now. Hermione slunk further into the corner of the divan. She wasn’t it was obvious, having at all her way. Who was this maroon dahlia coloured person who had outright stolen George? George had been petting her, making himself charming. It appeared suddenly to Hermione that perhaps she had been taking George too much for granted, too much her own property. Part of the past. Part of Philadelphia. Here George was something different, lionized, a person.
Maybe they wouldn’t notice. But what agony listening. Did she still love then George? “Lointaine. If you
“I can’t imagine why she didn’t speak to me.” “She’s like that.” “Yes. But I met her, had tea with her especially at Delia’s. The Prescotts’. George says you know them.” “Mary’s like that.” “Yes, but I don’t understand. Why? What’s it all about? Do people
Hydrangeas lifted round plum-coloured and shell pink and white balls of heavy porcelain beauty. Heavy porcelain beauty. “I’m glad you found me. Dragged me out of the corner into this conservatory. I was so wretched, miserable. It was so funny your coming across too and sitting on the other foot-stool. It was so funny. I was thinking.” “One could see that, Astraea.” “Astraea. Why do you call me that?” “I don’t know. Does one ever know why one does or doesn’t do these things? What does old Lowndes call you?” “O Undine sometimes.” “Lowndes is wrong there. You have no heart like Undine.” “Undine. Did Undine have a heart?” “I don’t know. I think so. I move by intuition when I see you. When I saw you. You know what’s the matter with me? I always wanted a beautiful mother. I should like to have had a mother like you.”
8
She shouldn’t wear the violets that he sent her for she had found out in a number of little ways, whispers, innuendoes, outright comment, that he wasn’t rich. He had given the impression of an insouciance that went with wealth, had thrown his head back, had grubbed in pockets for taxi fare, had said he hated good clothes. People at Delia’s, the most smart (Delia had pointed out) were the most shabby. “Fenton with his Eton affectations.” People who had been to Eton, to Cambridge, were allowed to slouch into rooms, to wear their clothes anyway. People wore or didn’t wear clothes as they did (or didn’t) in America. Each country had its standards. It was here apparently “smart” (as they called it) to be shabby. “You have to be a Duchess to dress like a fish-wife.” Someone had commented on someone who was not a Duchess but who dressed like one. “It’s sheer crass outrage. Putting on airs. She’s making out her pedigree to be somewhat on the grand scale.” “How do you mean, Delia? But she’s shabby.” “I mean that people here can’t be shabby unless they’re great. We are not obliged to accept that amount of dowdiness from a solicitor’s widow. Plus the grand air. Noblesse oblige. But she isn’t. We are not obliged to accept her just because she’s shabby.” It was all very complicated. Certain people had to be smart, others were allowed not to be. It was affectation to be too well dressed or it was an outrage not to be better dressed. Hermione had long ago given it all up. Her own little ideas had been further confused by George Lowndes. “You’re too nun-ish. That grey might be all right in Philadelphia.” But she didn’t care now. Something in her didn’t any more care. Someone had said he liked her in her slightly draped effects, the grey that flowed like water (he said) though she wasn’t Undine. Someone had said that everything she wore was perfect, different from anything he had yet seen, right and smart and yet not over-done. Not, as he said, obvious. Someone had said he hated English women with that rank colour (did he mean the Dalton?) and their grabbing insistencies. Someone had said English women were harpies, were dowds, were immaculate prudes or were Hell harpies. Someone had said there were in England pas de nuances (he said it in that French way) and that he had found in her the veritable Golden Fleece. Golden Fleece. Star. What did he not call her? His phrases, his expletives were marred when judged by intellectual standards. When judged by the intellect they were perhaps trite, shallow. Hermione did not judge them by the intellect. Something seemed to flow in her, about her. She had been hurt. Someone had seen that. Before she offered any explanation. Having offered explanation, he had seen it further. “But damn. I never knew a girl who read Greek.” “I don’t.” “I mean I never met a woman who knew remotely what Greek, what Greece stood for. You might do some essays.” “O essays? George thinks I’ll spoil my — style, he calls it, by essays (as far as I can make out) anything.” “Lowndes has printed something?” “No. He says I’m not modern enough and I’m too modern.” “What does he think he means by that?” “I don’t know. He doesn’t. But he wants to — to — somehow suppress me.”
George seemed to have put himself out no end to damp her ardour. Always with some little jibe. “Why don’t you move out of that infernal Bloomsbury? You can’t live there.” She had finally moved to Portman Square. But she didn’t like it very much. “You must live somewhere that I can send my friends to.” “But I don’t want you, your friends.” “You can’t expect me or anyone to call on you in Bloomsbury.” “No. Not in this house. I have only my room.” “Well you have to clear out to somewhere somehow decent. You can’t stay on here.” It seemed he was purposely wilful, purposely dragging her up, away. It was just as well he did this. The fog, the mist — crouched on the floor thinking — thinking. Rain had dripped and dripped. November. November in Bloomsbury. December. December in Portman Square. A drawing room and a knot of bridge playing habitués. “O Miss Gart. What? Another caller.”
But this wasn’t Portman Square. It was other. The Elgin Marble room, mid-winter afternoon. Violets pushed down into her grey long coat and violets breathed up into her face. Violets. These were curled slightly at the edges, slightly ruffled, a little different from all other violets. Ivy leaves about the bunch made a stiff little case, a holder for these violets like a Victorian wedding bouquet. The ivy leaves held the flowers stiff, gave them power, authorised them to flow outward being held so close. Ivy. The Bacchanalias. Ivy leaves.
She had found the clue now and this was it. Jerrold Darrington had given her the clue. This was the clue, the thing that had been for some two (almost three) months lacking. Darrington had given her in his odd witty way the clue. Darrington said the old Theseus there looked as if he had fallen over board, got worn thin with sea-water. The torse of Theseus from the Parthenon pediment did look that way. “We’ll go upstairs, look at those Tanagras.” What was it Darrington had that all the others hadn’t? He was different somehow. He cared about things, didn’t laugh when she said she wanted to see some old Persian manuscripts she had read about once in America. America even drew no smile, no cynical jibe from his store of quick repartee, of quick and bantering cynicism. When she said “America” she expected him to say (she was even in those days affable to all these witticisms) “Where’s that?” He didn’t. It was somehow so odd. What was it about Darrington. When she asked him he said “I suppose it was the misalliance. My governor you know married a country wench. Damn clever of her. She copped the old fellow down hunting. I was born six months after though they say in hushed tones poor Ned was a seven months’ baby. Damn fool the governor. One’s people are one’s damned ruin. They’ll do me in yet.” Darrington spoke freely, seemed to have no prejudices yet in his speaking he recalled other people, people who have the right to be dowdy she had met at Delia’s. He was that odd combination of the old flowering charm and something other. Something serious. Something that seemed to care and care so deeply. Was it the country wench simply that had copped the governor? “My governor’s a damn fool. Lost all his money speculating. Damn fool to have got caught I told him. Went to America under a nom de guerre, something like Cecil de Longchamps. I laugh myself sick sometimes thinking of that name. Poor old governor. Even yet when he can raise the fare we dash across to Paris. He used to say Jerry, don’t you worry. Two thousand a year when you come of age. Two thousand a year. It wasn’t two boblet.” Darrington père had been unsuccessful in his little venture. “Not that I blame the old bloke. It was his getting caught simply. The people in our part of the world (the governor’s Sussex Darrington) wouldn’t know us. Not that the mater ever made herself popular with the county. The governor now lives on his prestige, his ancient glory. Four quarterings though what good does that do? They aren’t his anyhow by rights, some shift over of my great grandmother’s name. We were originally Darrington-Nortons. However we shifted it, Norton-Darrington. Now it’s Darrington.” Hermione was charmed with this odd light on ancient history. Darrington to the rescue.
“I’m late again.” “No. No. I had to hurry out of that Portman Square atmosphere or get caught, glued tight into it and anyhow I was afraid of George coming.” “Afraid of dear old Lowndes. Don’t you like him?” “I don’t know. He seems bent on undermining my morale recently. He knows I’m reticent, frightened, afraid to talk about things and he rushes in, tells me all the horrid things everyone’s been saying.” “Horrid things, Astraea?” “O not horrid. Just odd. It seems the Dalton now for instance calls me Fiammetta and whenever she does call me Fiammetta (George did what was apparently a good imitation) people burst with laughter. I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s really funny.” “Yes, it is Astraea. There’s something funny in Dalton calling you Fiammetta. I can hear her do it. I can hear each syllable as she pronounces it. That woman has some sort of power. She has the devil’s own wit.” “But what have I done? Why does she want to blight me?” “Fiammetta. There’s something awfully funny” (though he said it seriously) “in that.”
Light filtered through fog and the effect was as of some vision, some dream room, built up of dream stuff from some other planet. It was not the world this. Nereids from the Nereid portal broke the sifted yellow light with triangulated drapery. An arm lifted in that curious mellow flow of curious colour. An arm lifted and seemed about to part the gauze fog that had so suddenly descended. Voices from the other room, feet shuffling. “The curve of the Parthenon steps is perhaps the most remarkable comment on the Attic genius. You will notice from this angle that the small model in the right hand case gives in its minute way the exact proportion. Bend lower from the side and you will see the step curve. Yet from the distance they appear straight.” Comment on the genius of antiquity. Darrington saw this. “Funny all this, these people. Nereids and you, Astraea. Nothing has ever seemed real before, the governor, rows at home, rowing me now, even now trying to make me respectable.” “Respectable. Aren’t you?” “Not as he wants, they want. Old friends, Percy Lubbock, offered to see me through the law. Couldn’t stand it. They think now I’m a lost soul and I never see them except when I’m really hungry.” “Are you ever, really—” But how go on with it? If he were hungry ever she shouldn’t take the violets. The violets breathed fresh up into her face as she felt her throat lift toward those Nereids for some solution. Should or should I not then take his violets? Darrington had laid violets at her shrine in that same spirit as in old days people brought milk and rose-leaves to those Nereids. There was something else too that would express this. Where, where was it? Somewhere. Was it a Persian manuscript? “If you have two loaves, sell one and buy narcissus.”
She seemed to hold the soul of Jerrold Darrington in her hands. He was right when he said he wanted a beautiful mother. He was her child.
9
She was telling him things (still later one afternoon still later in winter) that she would never have thought she could tell anybody, things it appeared she had not even been aware of. “Clara got so on one’s nerves you see. She wanted to be autocratic and whenever I made what I thought was a pretty gesture she said I was ill-bred.” “Actually said?” “Thought. It was in the air. She was so superior to everyone. Not like old Eugenia.” “Eugenia must be rather an old darling.” “No. She was cruel.” “All mothers are. You mustn’t take it hard. All parents are monsters of cruelty. They would rather one died in their clutches than that one winged out of it, loose.” “Died?” “Yes. Much rather. They haven’t the decency of hawks, not the respectability of tigers. Tigers, hawks let their young loose to grow. Our parents feed on us like vampires on raw flesh.” “Isn’t that — rather — rather—” “Strong? No not half strong enough, Astraea. You’re not free of the thing really. You think you are. They’ll come back and nab you.” “O don’t say that. Don’t say that—” But he said it again quite slowly emphasizing each word. “Do you think a thing like you can last for ever? Here you are, Astraea, in that fiendish Portman Square atmosphere. How can it continue. If I don’t marry you someone else will.” “Marry me?” “Hadn’t you thought about it? Isn’t it what we’ve been thinking of all the time?” Lights dimmed about them made pools of rose like great rose peonies in a half sun-lit garden. Great lights, shaded lights, from overhead made a mellow glow and the separated little table lamps opened as it were flower hearts toward that invisible shaded gold light. Music from a distant corner wailed out its plaintive prelude. Something extra, something different, people had a way of slipping up and asking for separate numbers. Who had asked for this? Was it herself simply?
Water was about her. The cold sea-pebbles and the wind in distant tree tops. Music. Not Walter’s music. But it was not true. She had said there were two kinds of music, Walter’s and other music, but now that Walter had returned to Paris, she must modify her statement. There were other kinds of music as many kinds as there were winds, cloud shapes or mountain torrents. This shape of music was something she had seen before, contemplated in her intensity, made her own. She had heard this a thousand times and a thousand times it had eluded her. People. Faces. Where had she so heard it? A diamond dart that caught a Gainsborough feather dropping gallantly over a wide hat brim recalled her. A diamond dart, faces, heads grey and brown and mouse-brown and pure white dressed immaculately with shell combs. Faces, the backs of heads somewhere. “I don’t exactly know—” Why did she speak? Other people were quiet. Why must she alone speak? It was somewhere different. She was not here. O, Darrington for a joke had asked her (was it for a joke?) perhaps to marry him. To consider him there anyhow for the taking. Music. The pebbles that shone and glinted in the mountain torrent, tortoise shell coloured pebbles. Yes that was the real colour of Walter’s eyes, not amber but tortoise shell. Hard like shell and light glazed across them. “I — have — a friend — in Paris.” A friend in Paris, music.
“You mean you want to marry him?” “O God — no. Imagine him anyway asking me to do it? No, no, no, no, no. I mean the music.” “Aren’t you rather vague? Now just what is it?” He always spoke so banteringly with her as if each thing he said was nothing, as if the very fact of his so speaking nullified his statement. She had never heard seriousness overlaid with such indifference; she had never heard indifference stamped and moulded with sincerity. What of him was real? What lacquer? Part of him somehow wasn’t there, was vague like the rose light of these great peonies that reached up toward the invisible luminous atmosphere. Hermione felt herself grey, a grey mist beside the rose warm glow of him, the thing she couldn’t quite define but that seemed to draw her up, up out of some cold clear water like a closed rose-lotos bud toward sunlight. Something in him, of him, about him, that she had no words for. Was it seeing simply as God sees? Was he rose light, was rose-light about him? What he said or did would make no difference to it any more than what Walter said or did could alter the cold snow-white that was about him. Walter was snow ridged with glacial blue. Darrington was so different. “No. It’s the music simply.” “You think of him then when youre hearing music?” “No, no. That’s just it. I don’t think of him when I’m hearing music.” “What then were you thinking? You must tell me.” He spoke simply, sincerely this time. And in her mind, in her perception she saw again sincerely. Not rose glow and countless people and a diamond crescent catching a Gainsborough feather. Not the tea tables and the room beyond and the gay odd atmosphere and the knowledge that Regent Street outside was soft and fair with fog that flowed like a clean river. Not that. This simply. The lilting sweet and penetrating song of Solveig. “It was Solveig’s song that they just now finished, wasn’t it?” She knew in the moment of framing the question that it was. It was Solveig’s song and a face beside which other faces in the world must be blurred and mis-shapen. A face that destroyed other faces was before her. “You see I saw Fayne Rabb first in a play. A play called Galatea. She was Pygmalion.” “Yes?” “She came across a carpet, a dark carpet in sandals. She wore a robe flung over one shoulder and her knees were bare. No. That wasn’t the first time I saw her. The first time I saw her was at Nellie — Nellie Thorpe — yes her name was Thorpe. Her sister took a prize in Paris. They wanted Fayne to take the prix de Rome.” “Yes?” “There were other people there. Lots of people I knew, some I didn’t. Fayne Rabb lifted her hand and said Koeuthoi Moi Agaiachoio — no, she doesn’t know any Greek but she spoke that way. She lifted her hand simply—” “Yes and further?” “Further? It stretched before and behind. It stretches like a path on water toward the stars, a path that leads to the star Hesperus and that leads back again to the rocks and the small crabs and star-fish fastened to the low tide pools. The path she trod across the dark strip of carpet (it was a studio scene of Nellie Thorpe’s and there was a good touch, a tall azalea in a pseudo-classic wine-jar) and Fayne spoke. It was Solveig’s song upset me. They played it in the interval, before, after. I just don’t remember.” “I see.” “You see you gave me Greek books to read. Not too hard. Something in you understands all this. I don’t myself understand much of it. You know more Greek than I do.” “And am less.” “Perhaps you are less. You aren’t authentic fifth or even pre-fifth. You’re late, a sort of Graeco-Roman over flowering period.” “I am a bit florid at times. True British roast beef.” “No not that. In your soul flowering, flowering—” What was there to describe him? “Like these rose lights rather.” “Pink frilled lamp shade to modify the ardour of the Attic genius?” “Yes, that simply. You are that. I burn too high, too hard. Fayne would, I think, kill me sometime. I don’t see or think or feel—” She didn’t know what she thought or felt for her head bent forward. Her eyes were blurred, merciful blurr that turned the room to some odd unreality like seeing a garden through a window pane, opaque with driven rain drops. The music soft and tender, nothing much one way or the other and the feeling suddenly that she was lost and lonely. “I don’t really — miss — them—” Darrington was getting the bill. It wasn’t that he minded her making a scene but brushing her tears away most gallantly she saw that waiters stirred and moved about them. They were clearing the little tea tables and re-setting them for dinner. Everyone almost had now gone. “We’ll not let this go on much longer darling. You see I’m afraid your bed will suddenly turn into Zeus in the night — you’re the sort of thing that would draw God from heaven — and thwart me.”
10
Marry him. Marry him. Marry him? What is — marriage? Don’t marry him. Marry. Him. What is—“But you can’t
Who couldn’t marry whom and what was it all about and who couldn’t whoever it was marry if she (or he) so wanted it? But did they want it (he or she) and whatever was it all about? There was all this fuss about marry, marry. Do. Don’t do. Marry. Do or don’t. But go about it neatly. All a matter of technique, your verses.
What was the matter with her verses and who said it? It was George who had said it. He had taken other verses. Whose? Darrington’s sonnet sequence. But that was Darrington. A huge large name on a page. Looks well Jerrold Darrington. O that was it. Yes, it would look well Mrs. Jerrold Darrington. Marry whom? Look well, Mrs. Darrington. Nobody making faces because she was miss-miss-hit or miss. She was damn sick of it. Quaint. She was a quaint person. They would keep on saying it. Hit or miss. Well. . she wouldn’t be a quaint. . hit or miss. Mrs. Jerrold Darrington, a person. A person. Quaint, a hybrid. No hybrid.
Someone said she was funny but no hybrid. “Throw-back. She belongs here.” Someone at a party said she belonged to England. Mrs. Jerrold Darrington.
No, of course she couldn’t marry George Lowndes. She should have known that from the start but she had to keep him on, to prod him on, actually went to his rooms and told him she was ready, to check-mate old Eugenia. She liked Darrington. Yes, it was Darrington who had asked her. She was on a bed, a great bed (a Zeus-bed he called it) not a boat and this was London. Of course this was London. A clock striking, that little church like a cheese-box George said. A church like a cheese box standing all arrogant just in the way of the traffic. Churches in London never moved an inch for all the traffic. That was the nice thing about them. That was the nice thing about London. Would Darrington be like that? Just there, rather square-set, a little heavy (when he wasn’t too hungry) with his damn-your-eyes attitude about parents and his understanding of Fayne Rabb. Would Darrington let her stay for Hermione (someone had said so at a party) was their someone out of Shakespeare and belonged here. She wanted an anchor. She wanted a haven. Would Darrington want her, understand when she told him about George Lowndes? After all, George had kissed and kissed her. Famished kisses like a desert wind full of sand, the wrong flowers, hybiscus, scarlet line of his really beautiful mouth. People said he was shockingly beautiful. She didn’t want to marry—“but you can’t
“But I thought you were engaged to him and I thought you broke it off.” Was she engaged to him? Kisses arid but not here (in London) quite so full of desert heat and blinding wilting sand, met hers. Her mouth lifted and kisses bent and flowered upon it. The warmth of the tropic hybiscus red of George Lowndes was somehow tempered, somehow lost in this thing. The fog that drifted, that lifted, the late winter (or the early spring) bride veil of glistening, glamourous mist. “I love the mist, the fog. It seems I never was so happy.” Kisses nullified her, nullified her pain, there was no pain in her heart. She had forgotten simply. In London the desert sun was modified and the hyacinths lifted simply. Mist and glamour and the annihilating beauty. George Lowndes was beautiful. Here people did not laugh at George. People asked his opinion, a little reverently. It was funny watching people reverencing George. He had done a book on Dante and Provence and Renaissance Latin poetry. Georgio in London. His odd clothes not so odd, his little brush of a beard and his velvet coat and his cravats like flowers in mosaic of maroon and green and gilt and odd vermillion. George didn’t look odd though he looked more odd than ever. People seemed to understand, did not waste time commenting on his clothes. Said, “George Lowndes, odd fellow. . he has a flair for beauty.”
Georgio had a flair, had always had it. George being tender, thoughtful suddenly. “Getting enough to eat, Undine?” “O lots. Yes.” “I make a point of looking up old Mrs. Towers once a week to find out.” “Yes, George. She tells me when you drop in. She adores you.” “Had a room once years ago in my affluent days when we crossed with my damn aunt who just won’t pass out.” “O George. Don’t let poverty depress you.” “It ain’t my own exactly—” “Then whose is it?”
George seemed to be on the point of telling her something and the studio was empty. It was really empty and the floating veils of the floating laughter and people’s funny clothes that yet looked right in London and their hostess, Katherine Farr. Katherine Farr whom they admired and a little despised with her huge circulation, with her one or two novels a year, all good, all a little better than anyone else’s and yet not good enough for them. Katherine was so kind, had paused especially to ask her. People were kind. “I want you especially to wait on. I want you and George to stay and have some supper.”
Hermione had stayed with George in Katherine’s studio and it seemed perhaps the most beautiful of many, many beautiful studios, of many lovely afternoons that turned at a breath to evening and then turned (like Danaë in her sleep) to night. Mist and night and dawn took on significance. They held here personality, were people. Four o’clock was a person who entered somewhat briskly, five o’clock was announced in a hushed ambassadorial whisper. Six, seven and eight. Nine, ten and eleven. Was it the way clocks struck, muffled under mist like bells beneath sea water? The castle under the sea that Walter played to them in Clichy here took form, was something. People came and went but the people had less personality than hours, than things. Was it all haunted, here under the sea? England. Had anyone ever, could anyone ever have loved as she did?
“People come like hours and hours transform themselves to people.” “Which hours? Which people?” “Well that frump on the New Era for example it seems to me must be three o’clock. A lost hour, an hour that’s somehow lost, hasn’t a lover.” “Yes. Three o’clock is somewhat that.” “I think of Mary Dalton as somehow always just about eleven. Something hectic before mid-night. An illicit extra cock-tail (but that’s not the time for cock-tails). What do I mean? I don’t associate her with wine but she sets me shaking as if I had been upset, as if someone had offered me a crème-de-menthe instead of early morning tea.” “Rather neat that.” “Katherine Farr here with her solid novels and her income and her kindness seems some inevitable but somehow rather stern hour. Which is it? Is it nine and all the day before one at a hard desk?” “Poor Katherine.” “You could make her, do, into something odd, a little quaint. She might be sometimes the hours moles crawl (she seems like a mole with eyes) out thinking it is night but finding dawn. Just as dawn breaks yet hadn’t the courage of its flowering.” “Katherine on the whole is the best fellow of the damn lot.” “I didn’t say she wasn’t. Perhaps that’s just it. I want her to like me. I feel somehow she doesn’t.” “But she goes out of her way. Asked you to stay this time.” “Yes, isn’t that a little guilty complex? She doesn’t really like me. She looks at me and thinks why don’t I like the little American Her Gart? She looks and wonders. She sees I’m not very old nor very horrible. She can’t say I’m actually a viper. She wants some excuse for her slight bewilderment. I’m apparently a nice girl and I’m living alone in Portman Square and it sounds a bit fishy about my expecting (perhaps) my mother soon to join me. She thinks I’m nice and I don’t do things nice girls do. This for instance.” “Katherine doesn’t know you do this.” “Yes, she does. Everybody does. Somehow everything one does here is everybody’s property. I know and feel she must know. Why did she ask me to stay on here with you?” “Perhaps I asked her to.” “Does that alter it? Would a nice girl do it?” “Well we were — I mean — we—” “We were engaged. Whats that got to do with it? Its just the one reason according to ordinary standards I shouldn’t do this.” Famished and forgetting she lifted hyacinths to George’s kisses.
Drugged and drunk she said she had forgotten. Drugged with the hybiscus colour, with the odd tremors that the clock made striking, striking. Clocks were always striking and the colour of the mist was different. She was sure that each vibration of each clock sent shivers, tremors through the mist. Little paths of light. The bells of Saint Clement’s. Lemons. Not lemon light, silver rather, those high bell notes. Notes, bells. . who is it in me, what is it in me, hears bells, notes? Morse code. . Gart formula. . Walter could you tell me? Bells made forms, notes, pictures were notes and bells made pictures, Walter said, so that he could play when she made a picture (he said) with the two candles against the grey-grey of the Clichy studio walls. . suppressed, something suppressed that sees the very ring and quiver of the clock notes make strange pattern. O I am so happy. George. . and people came in after supper and the candles make exquisite daffodils in the great brown studio. One had even understood Katherine Farr in that light. Katherine. Maybe someone, someone somewhere called her Katy when she was little. Katy did Katy didn’t. She was rather like a Katy did, small and compact, some little busy insect, chirping, scraping music out of its legs, not bird music, not frog music even, but music of a sort (everybody’s music of a sort) understanding other people. Yes, Katherine did understand, was not surprised when she had come back, found Her crouched low before the fire. Nothing mattered. Her had done nothing to matter. After all, George’s hybiscus red
Nothing mattered, could matter. Light made the room a little common but did that matter (had she been asleep?) a knock and hot water. How funny hot water and no proper running water in the bath room. Baths but real baths not casual rushing in to wash your hands. Water in little pots with a clean towel to keep it warm. A clean towel and all as carefully set and timed as the morning tea-pot with its little fitted muffler. Hot water. Hot tea. All arranged and out of a book and somehow weird and somehow oddly civilized. Little things mattered, not the great things. Things that wracked and tore you were forgotten. Really great emotions were these things, clocks that struck and struck and left a trail of silver. A star on the sea left such a trail of silver. Star. Astraea. But she couldn’t
A volcanic rock shrivelled, opened, cracked, fell and hyacinths were about her, shrivelled, withered as the flowers dropped by Persephone. Riven hyacinths. She hadn’t asked any great thing, just to be let alone. Perhaps that was the great thing. She hadn’t asked nor walked into a volcano head on, seeing it, just for the sake of the sensation. She had been so happy. She thought she had never been so happy. Candles and Katherine Farr being kind. People and faces and all blurred and nobody being a sharp sword or an angel’s sword or any of those steely terrible, beautiful embodied images of stark pain. Pain had vanished. There was no pain. Pain had departed suddenly, had driven herself before it out of Hell. She had risen from Hell as Persephone from the underworld. She had crossed Styx. This was something unlawful. Terrible. This thing that burned in her hand— “the second bell’s been ringing some time miss.” “I’ll be late. I’ll be coming later,” the letter slipped under her door, the letter that had been slipped under her door. Who had slipped this under her door? “Shall I come in and turn the bed down now or later?” Now or later? Now or later? Something had to be done sometime, now or later. “O now.” Yes, now. She would see, Fayne would see, they would all see how she’d act about it. If she could stand up now and re-read the letter her whole life would be different. If she could re-read the letter she would be able to smile, to say yes, no. To say, no. To say, yes. Don’t marry him. Who had said that? Who had ranted (it was that simply) about marriage, talked about biologic necessities? And being beyond that. Who had done it? It was Fayne Rabb simply. It was Fayne who had said one couldn’t possibly marry. O
11
The letter burned, vitriolic blue acid in her hand though she hadn’t the letter (had not for some time had the letter) in her hand. The touch of the letter left a scar across the fingers that opened it, scar of burning acid, not of fire, scalding not searing. Scalding and searing. “O Miss Gart. You are too metaphysical.” Bald headed little Chemistry professor catching her up when she wanted to apply his prim formula to the more extensive phases of life, of humanity. One and one and two, and little plus and minus signs and the acid that had broken the test tube and the scars across her wrist, tiny scars that she was rather proud of. Too metaphysical. Not metaphysical enough. Idealists said she was a rank realist and too set and defined in her outlook. Scientists told her off for being idealistic. Must she bow to either judgment? She was herself simply. . bell notes made patterns in the air that no one could take from her. The blue vitriol of Fayne’s letter had left its scar but on the whole, was she not proud of it? Scar that she hadn’t turned from, wound that she had not repudiated. It was so deep, so terrible that it was almost joy to have it. It was all (had been) so terrible that it had removed itself from the first moment from any possible realm of probabilities, it was drama simply, a rather good drama. It was the second act of a rather second-rate play done by first rate actors. It was the second act (was it the third?) of a somewhat hackneyed but odd melodrama that was saved from banality by the very casual and perfect manner of the odd producers. The whole thing was in some realm in which reality was suspended while people watched themselves move, speak. They were not real. Their very unreality saved them, saved her. Had it really mattered? It had never mattered: the odd vitriolic blue that had been the burning destructive acid of the letter had almost cauterized the death wound. So deep, so vitriolic that the rest could not matter. Not even the little note afterwards so gracious, so suave in its serenity. The note from this odd person who was (it appeared) would forever be, just Fayne’s husband. The man Fayne had married wrote to her. She had found the letter with a little batch of things that didn’t matter and the letter itself from this odd suave person who was (would always be) just Fayne’s husband could not matter. Suave like the breath of a stage producer who comes before the curtain to explain his presence. His presence being due (in all these cases) to the absence of the right hand man or prima donna. “Ladies and gentlemen, I regret having to inform you. .” This person who was (would always be) just Fayne’s husband had suavely countenanced evidently something. “Fayne is worn out with the journey. She misses her mother and has been ill somewhat. She begs me” (when had Fay ever begged anybody anything?) “to explain this. Will you come to our” (
Answering the appeal of this person who was (would always be) just Fayne’s husband, Hermione had found herself one day in April in a little odd street off Piccadilly, little odd eclectic street like going into a foreign city suddenly and it all coming back, all the odd things and little streets but this was a runny little eclectic street in which to find Fayne Rabb. Tiny cool corridor with a great mirror at the far end from which a person (not herself) paused to re-survey her. Grey person looking cool, looking right in the cool little narrow hall. A table and something, a palm in a tall basket. Baskets spilling flowers. A row under the mirror of potted shrub azaleas. Above azaleas, pink and yellow and flame red a person (not Hermione) paused to look at another person, herself simply. The person who was not Hermione turned from the gaze of the person who so simply was Hermione to answer someone, something, “yes, they’re expecting me. Mrs. — Mrs. — ” my God, what was their name? She had forgotten what the name was. Somewhere, somehow someone had signed a name across a page and that name was now the only guarantee that she would find Fayne Rabb. A name she had suddenly and poignantly forgotten. “O,” she couldn’t say “I’ve forgotten what their name is.” These were people who had asked her. She had forgotten their name. Fayne was someone, somewhere in this nice little hotel, everything just right and someone, also just right was waiting by her elbow asking for their name, no it was her name. Hermione looked at the face in the mirror. Would it recall some name? George’s name was George Lowndes, but that wouldn’t do (though he had offered it to her) in this emergency. Whose name? Darrington. Darrington was a good name. The Sussex Darringtons you know. She needn’t tell them that the governor had more or less eloped with a country girl and that Darrington was somewhat in advance of expectations. I mean a seven months’ baby. But damn, he had said, it was barely six. Names. People. Someone might yet help her.
Someone might yet help her.
Fayne Rabb was in a bed, a big bed, a nice bed, a better bed than Hermione had ever seen her in. Fayne was looking at someone who was not Hermione though Fayne (odd little person in a big bed) seemed to think it was Hermione. “O darling—” Darling this. Darling that. What about vitriolic blue letters and a scar across her wrist (no across her breast) that would be there forever? But there was something in this. There was something in the very poignant finality of vitriolic blue. It was a thing final, done for, finished. “Darling—” But she wasn’t having any. A tall person in a wide hat looked at Fayne Rabb on a big bed. It was perhaps Hermione that so regarded Fayne propped up and wearing (for a wonder) a really pretty bed-jacket. “I like your pretty little boudoir jacket.” “Is
Small arms reached out. Were her arms then small? Hermione had thought of Fayne Rabb as Pygmalion, a little sturdy, a little strong, a little defiant. Who was this reaching small magnolia white arms out toward her? “Can’t you — understand?” “Understand? Understand what, Fayne Rabb?” “Can’t you understand? Can’t you— make — allowances?” “For what? You seem as far as I in my limited way can make out, to have done very well indeed for yourself.” “O don’t be cruel. Don’t, don’t be cynical.” But tea entered. . Hermione was glad for tea entering. The right sort of tea with the right sort of rose buds on the tea cups. “This is lovely china.” “Is
Pretty hat. Pretty bed-jacket. Pretty tea-cups. What after all, could be more suitable?
“But I want you to like Maurice.” “But I do like him.” “How can you like him when you’ve never seen him?” “But I have seen him.” “O, you saw him? When? Where did you see Maurice?” “I saw him as I was coming in, in the hall-way.” “How did you know it was Maurice?” “I didn’t. He knew it was me.”
But that didn’t matter, that would go on for ever, that kind of conversation. It was no good that kind of talk, anyone could do it. But whatever other kind of talk could there possibly be now with Fayne? “I wanted him to like you for I insisted when we arranged about the marriage that you were to be with us.” “
“How devastatingly kind of you. May I ask a favour?” “Any number, beautiful.” “I would like to bring a new friend, a certain art critic, Jerrold Darrington, poet, all those minor accomplishments that you so despise now.” “O another—?” “Another what?” “Victim.” “No. He’s not a victim. He’s been helping me with some translations, Greek, essays.” “Really pretty high brow.” “Yes, really. He cares about — my — mind—” “Presumably.” “May I bring him?” “I don’t to tell you the truth trust anyone with a name like Darrington. I suppose he’s an earl’s bastard and an accomplished black-mailer.” “Well — he’s not exactly an earl’s bastard—” Someone was in the room.
“O Maurice.” The little creature on the bed (how then had Fay suddenly become so small and wilted?) spoke weakly, “this — is— Hermione.” “I know that.” He came now slowly forward. The face as it squinted a little toward Hermione was again familiar. There was a voice went with it. O was it Maurice
“Well, will you come with us to Dresden? Fayne tells me you have a flair, love these things.” What after all could be more suitable? She had heard this Morrison talk, lecture of famous cities. From the school-girl point of view, what could be more adequate, more charming, something as we say “to write home about.” Maurice Morrison and Fayne Rabb. It seemed somehow all right, most suitable. Even Eugenia couldn’t mind it. He was looking at her from a distance and it occurred to her that she was behaving badly. “O its charming, charming and so kind.” What could be kinder? On their honey-moon. “O, I’d love to. . If you’ll make a list out, some little résumé of what it might cost and if I can afford it.” The light softening of late spring stole upon them. He was older than Fayne Rabb, quite old, he seemed almost — almost old, like a young uncle. “O yes we must arrange it.” She was standing and again a tall figure bent to smile into her lifted face. “How
He saw her to the door, saw her out of the door, all grown up, like a nice half-strange, very young uncle. The right voice, the right gesture, not insisting too far, letting her run away into the dusk without overdue protest. “Yes, Fayne tells me you like running wild a little. I won’t insist then on the taxi.”
12
“But dammmm-nnnnn.” The expletive broke china, would break china if it went on thundering and re-echoing in the little side-room where George had drawn her, drawn her out of the crowd so he might expostulate (as he put it) sanely with her. The expletive hung like wasps clinging to the chandelier that hung a little too low, dwarfing the small room with its great elegance. The little room off the big room in the little right hotel where the others were waiting, clustered about palms, waiting for Fayne who was their hostess and it was funny her being so late but she had stayed upstairs to talk with Maurice’s mother and they had gone on talking and they were trying on all the pretty things and she was putting on her wedding gown and her bride veil just to show them. “Da—” this time it stuck in George’s throat and Hermione was afraid it would swell there like a frog swelling and burst George Lowndes. The “da—” became finally a low rumble of mmmms and nnns and the same feeling that another host of buzzing flies had joined the already thick group about the ornate mirror. The mirror was at the back but it reflected itself and George looking at her in another mirror across the narrow corridor. The mirror across the corridor and the back of her reflected head and George’s side face was broken from time to time by people crossing. Darrington. Darrington looked rather like a head-waiter in his evening dress. His face was too heavy, too Flemish for the collar. Was that the country girl his governor had copped or who had (was it?) copped his governor? Fayne Rabb made people seem common. Her odd curious stone like, marble lift of flawless feature. Fayne’s features were flawless in the right setting and facing George now straight she knew, felt inwardly that she was really grateful to this Maurice who had so set Fayne in the right place. Fayne with fair skin, with magnolia white skin but looking right, with curtains half drawn more beautiful than any one could possibly imagine. “Don’t you think Fay is looking better for the change? I felt her mother, poor Clara, was responsible for that strained look, for that constant nervousness and her odd erratic furies. She seems perfect in this setting.” George was sitting beside Hermione on the narrow bench against the wall. Narrow, hard little bench, half furniture, half wall decoration. George slid forward, disconsolately. “You don’t mean to tell me that she’s really married?”
“Married. What do you mean George, really married?” “I mean she told me something utterly different.” “Different?” “She said this was a trial trip. That she and Maurice there weren’t going to — ah — experiment till they knew each other better. That she was really fond of Llewyn.” “Llewyn? What’s John Llewyn got to do with it?” “Did you meet him? Do you know him?” “No. Only here. I used to hear him lecture in America. Rather scathing. Browning in lavender gloves. It was he (Fayne tells me) introduced them.” “Introduced them — exactly.” “What do you mean, exactly?” “I mean it’s Llewyn that she’s in with. The other person is only a sort of mari — mari—” George’s French deserted him on most important occasions—“well, ah, complaisant. I mean a complaisant husband who isn’t really married.” “Married? What do you mean, really married?” “I mean that simply. I mean he never — ah I mean they—” “O George what
Fayne, it appeared, had thought she had kept them waiting long enough for she came in, drifted across the mirror that reflected (had reflected) Hermione and George Lowndes. Fayne looking odd in a fashion-plate bride veil and a fashion-plate bride-train and yet wasn’t it right and proper, though she pulled her veil off instantly and old Mrs. Morrison took it reverently, already seemed to love her. Fayne Rabb with relatives, in-laws, someone who was (someone said) related to a baronet and the rest of them, all of them who had so shone in Hermione’s little constellation cluster, looked odd, looked insignificant. George looked a little odd as if he needed to be explained and evidently someone had already thought that for old Mrs. Morrison was fluttering toward them “but my son tells me you have written
Old Mrs. Morrison said it rather clearly, rather loud, in a loud clear voice so that the relatives (the one who was, it was whispered related to a baronet) might understand why George came in a velvet jacket. O yes this is Mr. Darrington (she had got that also, she was explaining Darrington) “not Kent, the Sussex Darringtons.” Darrington seemed to have more of a sense of humour or of proportion for he wasn’t having any of the patronizing chaff of the relation to a baronet. Hermione found that Darrington in spite of the chin that rose slightly too roundly Flemish from the collar, stood the test better than dear George. He knew the answers to all this, in spite of (or because of) the governor’s odd position. “Yes. Sussex. Beastly bog. Sheep and sky-larks sounding like corks popping.” Was this desecration or merely the right answer? Putting someone (the relation to a baronet) in his right place. People. Odd funny people to see about Fayne Rabb. They had dwarfed herself and George (“And which did you say she was engaged to?”) and Hermione was supposed to be engaged to one or both, George or Darrington, and her little cluster, her tiny constellation went dim and lustreless beside that conflagration that burned about Fayne Rabb. Fayne in her white robe, the moon. Her chin thrust out arrogant. Hermione had seen her look more beautiful though she liked her in that dress, it made the right marble lines and the arrogant full but firm little breasts and the line that the dress brought out of the perfect narrow hips. Hermione liked to see Fayne look right. Even the relation of the baronet must respect this.
“And this is her glove.” It was old Mrs. Morrison. She was holding it up like some holy relic while Fayne’s constellation seemed to be forming and tying itself about arms and tying bare arms about its own immaculate dinner jacket. “This is how they do things in America.” She was explaining the finger cut off at the knuckle. Odd thing, a white glove (when had she ever seen a long white glove of Fayne’s?). “The finger is cut off, you see—” Old Mrs. Morrison paused in rapture, “for the
The glove, the ring. They would be leaving in a few days. Now they were going in to dinner. Going in. Yes she would wait, going in. Who was meant to take her. But there was no arranging this thing. George had her, tucked her hand into his velvet crook of his velvet monkey jacket, “I’d beat it right now, Dryad. Only I don’t trust you with ’em. As your nearest male relation.”
“As your nearest male relative, I tell you this won’t do.” “But George, you have been arguing round and about it and it seems such rank futility. Fayne is married. I will have (if you are so dead-set on your conventions) a chaperone—” “Chaperone?” “I mean she’s married. Her husband asked me—” “Husband?” But they had been going on and on with this, it seemed they had been going on and over and around this for years, centuries. It seemed some barren desert and the sand, the hot arid arguments of George blasted, withered her. “Don’t you see? He’s that very famous lecturer.” “Lecturer be—” “Yes, yes, yes. But I mean even Eugenia, even my mother must know all about him.” “Did you ever hear of your mother going to Bruges or Ghent or Little Rock or Athens, Iohio, with any one on their honey-moon?” “Well, no — not exactly on their—” “Exactly.” George seemed to think this finished matters. Each time they got to this point in the argument, George seemed to think the matter finished but Hermione would begin and would continue. It seemed with that slim shape in beautiful white satin to recall her that George was some rankly gross little organ monkey with his wrong velvet jacket. They all looked right, especially the husband. Waiters would do what these people said. There would be no jumble and quarrelling over tips and people trying to bully one though on the whole people were inclined not to. But the
When they got to this point of the argument, Hermione said, “but what difference can that make (if it’s true)—” and George answered “It wouldn’t. Only the whole thing has been cooked up for this precisely. It’s the Llewyn person that’s concocted it.” “But nonsense, Fay hardly at all knows him.” “She told you that, did she? She was anxious to impress me and told me something different.” “O George it’s all so mad and so unlike you. So unfair, simply.” “Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. But I’ll be there at the station.” Climbing weary stairs to her room, her lovely room that she had thought so beautiful, her room full of sound and colour, that in early spring had been filled with bell-notes like angels’ feathers ruffling wind, ruffling, little petals. . such childish images, such sentimental things and she had minded. She had slept in this room, wakened in this room, had letters pushed under the door, Darrington’s letters, all those faithfully funny little letters when he was being funny simply. “Well, I don’t mind Astraea, if it’s Zeus but no one else, I warn you.” She was to have Zeus for a lover. No one else. The Zeus-bed, the bed (so clean) that Darrington said might at any moment become Zeus or the Bull that carried off Europa. Letters under the door with her early tea, to be devoured in dim light sitting up in bed. Letters and jokes that had made cyclamen trail of colour in the dim room. “You Astraea,
“Then you have decided not to do it?” “No. George decided.” “What then exactly happened?” “I went to the station as arranged with bags and baggage and found George had waited, seen me, seen the things coming through, countermanded the order, got the ticket back from Morrison—” “All while you waited?” “Most of it before I had arrived. I don’t know how he did it.”
Could she see Fayne again after this? Fayne’s last word had been with odd theatrical little lift of brows, “O I hadn’t realised it had gone
13
There was no separation in this. She was in Paris but there was no separation. Things existed in different planes. She was had moved into a train, out of a train, into a boat, off a boat, onto a train. The real life she was living might have been the same anywhere, Shanghai, New Orleans or Rotterdam. It only happened she was now in Paris. She moved instinctively (knowing Paris) to the Rue Jacob, the right side (being the wrong side) of the river, their side of the river but in a different hotel, not one of the old ones, not talking to the same people, “but where is your aunt? Where is your cousin?” She wouldn’t tell them that her aunt was in Shanghai or Amsterdam. She wouldn’t have the heart to make up stories. But she must make up, all the same, stories, other stories, “waiting for a boat. Yes Mademoiselle Moore gave me your address. Yes, I knew Miss Moore in Philadelphia.” Books, note books, addresses from some one, from some one else, all people in Philadelphia (unto the angel in Philadelphia, write. .) that she had forgotten. She had forgotten all those people, had made a point of quite forgetting. How odd she had never “looked up” as they say, anyone, all the little sheaf of letters, introductions, having Fayne Rabb, seeing Walter, had been enough. George too asking her to see people. The same street. “Yes thank you madame. I am very tired.” Yes the room was pretty. Yes Miss Moore was a great friend. Yes she had been at school with Miss Moore’s sister, the other Miss Moore. Yes she knew Miss Mira Thorpe. Yes we were all so proud of Mira Thorpe, she had taken the prix de something or other and yes she knew Miss Thorpe, the other one too in Philadelphia. Yes she would stay until she heard from her friends who were due over, maybe one week, maybe three, maybe all the summer. Yes she liked her petit déjeuner in bed, in the morning, about eight, no not later. Yes she knew this part of Paris, had been here before, yes it was last summer.
Was it last summer? It seemed impossible. Late last summer. Not a year past. Not a year past, it had seemed many centuries. Centuries with painted emblems like heralds’ banners. All the months had banners, painted signs, emblems of time spent and time lost and time perhaps forgotten. Emblem banners, all lost, all taken in a moment in some unfair badly arranged tournament. Fayne had taken all the banners simply. Fayne had entered unfairly pitched lists and had simply walked off with everything, George with his vermillion and orange lilies, Darrington with his rose light and his streaks of flaming passion. Lilies. Lilies. There were lilies in the street. Muguet. It was muguet everywhere. Why was it muguet everywhere? It is, don’t you know, mademoiselle, have you never known, mademoiselle, the first of May. We have muguet. She bought muguet. Why did she buy muguet? She walked swift and erect and reckless past the Institut de France. The world’s good word the Institute. The Institut de France. She belonged to the Institut de France because Carl Gart had had books from there and she had torn the wrapping off and helped catalogue the books. Other books. . the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces. . Poems.
Who the—? It was a voice. Someone who knew her. Not as bad as she had expected. “O hello.” It wasn’t as bad as it might have been, in fact it wasn’t bad at all. “I didn’t know you were here.” “Well, I don’t know myself that I am. I mean I rushed off from London, only stayed there to see some people, love Paris, London hateful.” Hermione had learned this early. You must say you hate London to most Paris-Americans. “Awful place. I only stayed because I have some friends there.” “George?” “O yes, dear old George. But he’s coming over. They all are. Walter’s due to give another concert.” Not a bad sort, looking younger than she was, a pretty flat the right side of the river. Hermione had heard all about her, had been once to see her, crowding in for a moment one day when the Rabbs were busy. Pretty flat. Pretty apartment. Woman too old to be young, not young enough to be old. Didn’t seem old. What was the matter with her?
Hermione stopped to look straight into Shirley Thornton’s eyes. A pretty name Shirley. But she had never seen her. Why had Shirley Thornton who didn’t know her, stopped her, called her Hermione? What did she want of her. Shirley Thornton standing in the full glare of May day splendour looked thin, peaked, the right sort of clothes, a hat shading her almond shaped eyes. Her skirt tailored and fitting beautifully. But come to think of it, Shirley hardly knew her. Didn’t know her. Why did she speak, why had she spoken to her? “I wanted to write you last year — I was busy—” Had she wanted to? She had forgotten all about her, had particularly not wanted to see her. Shirley had taken one of those precious hours, when hours were very precious. Hours. Did they exist now any longer? What was life? Muguet. “Yes. I was so casual. George so awfully anxious I should know you.” Why had George wanted Hermione to know her? Hermione had not stopped to ask, nor cared to. “Come to see me. Soon. You have the address?” “Yes — Shirley.” “You didn’t seem to remember me.” “O I did, I did perfectly.” “You seemed lost, vague, uncertain somehow. That’s why I spoke, called you Hermione.” “Yes.” “Do come. George will soon be over. We’ll all dine together.”
. . That odd spectacle would in no way leave her. That spectacle of George heaving a summer overcoat toward a departing train, pronouncing, “sic transit gloria mundi.” Hermione didn’t want so simply to see George, to dine à trois with George Lowndes and another, someone who wore the right clothes, lived in the right street, had the right food, hung the right pictures, boasted even the very right piano, the baby-grand taking up more than his share of room, making the rest of the room all the more cosy and compact for his unwieldly baby bulk and the bulk of the things he stood for. Hermione recalled her little visit there with Shirley, talking about something, talking about nothing, wondering if she would be too late for the Rabbs at the little Rue du Four crémerie where they always had their supper. Rue du Four, the wrong side of the river, not caring what the girl had said or who she was, having come because George sent her for some reason, making polite adieux, writing that she couldn’t come again, was called suddenly to London. All the same it was part of that wrong side of Paris life that now escaped her. Escaped her? But it never did. Little rows of communicants were passing in the streets, set there to remind her. Little rows of little girls with long trains and veils. . God, God, what a farce and she wasn’t (George said so) even “married.” Bride’s veils, muguet and the parks a paradise of chestnuts. That year the pink and rose shell chestnuts broke across her like shells from some forgotten paradise. Shells from some sea. Aphrodite. But Fay wasn’t. O if she only were, if she only had been, if Hermione could have fallen at her feet, O Fay, you’re grown up now in your bride things. . a lovely mother. O Fay, let me be your first child. But she hadn’t. Couldn’t. But it wasn’t true, couldn’t be true what George had told her. How she hated George Lowndes. Why had she anyhow presumed his tale true? Fayne carrying on a “vulgar intrigue” (it was George’s phrase) with this Welshman, this fascinating Llewyn that they all knew, had known (but O so distantly) in Philadelphia. Llewyn with his Oxford affectation and his brilliant pronouncements on literature. “Browning in lavender gloves.” It gave one a new idea, destructive, dominant, domineering. Fancy Fay having met him by accident, somewhere (where?) and his falling for her. Little Fay rather wistful with her hatred (her then hatred) of all men. “But you can’t
No, she mustn’t stay here. Mustn’t go round and round things and throwing herself on the bed to think things out. No. She mustn’t. What should she do? Where should she go? Not the Louvre. Lovely corridors and Fayne’s pronouncements coming back. Why did they all make such amazing statements, nothing sacred, they were all so brilliant. Pictures, statues, poems, people. They made their brilliant statements. Browning in lavender gloves. They had everything at their finger-tips, such very clever people. Clever, even George couldn’t stand up to them. They chaffed George. They found fault, quite sternly with his Dante. Poor old George. They hadn’t spared him, frayed his blatant banner of scholarship, ripped it to pieces with their brilliance. O that was the right setting for Fay. Fayne Rabb was as clever as any. She was far more brilliant. Fayne with her conflagration. No, no, no, no, no. Fay was something different. O why do my tears flow like some damned leak in the roof? Not proper tears just coming on and on and making one uncomfortable. Am I ill then? Its being alone and muguet hateful in a tumbler like those striped orange lilies they had bought at the Quai aux Fleurs and never enough tooth-brush tumbler to put flowers in. Muguet. What made her think of Shirley? Seeing her that day (some ten days ago?) when she first bought muguet. Muguet. The first of May. She must go and see her.
14
“Thank you so much. Yes I do like lemon. Yes in England everyone has milk, never lemon. They say it is so
“Engaged to? But I didn’t know he was engaged.” Hermione had been under a vague half-impression that it was she herself who was vaguely half-engaged to George Lowndes. “O. But I thought he’d told you.” “O no. Never.” “But how terrible of me. He wrote me in the strictest confidence.” “O but—” O but. It seemed somehow rather odd now. If George were engaged, really engaged, he should have told her. Had he told her? He mumbled, murmured, had a way of hurling sonnets at her and asking her opinion. Was that his way of telling? Had he told her? She remembered one evening, the most beautiful, it seemed now, of all the many beautiful London evenings. But London wasn’t real, London was a dream. London had been destroyed, marred, blasted. The castle beneath the sea, the very sea, the little Mermaid, all the dream and half-mystery, the glamour of the drift and drift and the cold annihilating beauty. London. Where was it then in London? Hyacinths were reaching up to kisses. . kisses that at last hadn’t hurt her. George was speaking to her—“my damn aunt just won’t pass out.” “O George, don’t let poverty depress you.” “It ain’t my own exactly.” “Then whose is it?”
Had that been his idea in asking Katherine Farr to ask her to stay on alone in her studio before supper? Was that what he wanted? Just to tell her. “O George didn’t exactly
Had George then deceived her? You don’t kiss people like that, you don’t kiss them at all if you are “engaged” elsewhere. Engaged, what an odd idea. The whole place was mad, obsessed. And Shirley now continued. “And Walter.” “Walter?” “I believe finally the two parents have consented. You know marriage in France is a grave ceremony—” Shirley was speaking blankly to a blank wall. The black undeviating surface of the baby-grand. “He gave me lessons for a time. Harmony—” Harmony. Vérène had said once, “Walter gives lessons in har-mony to American girls, my pupils.” “Are you then a pupil of theirs?” “Theirs?” Hermione looked into almond shaped odd eyes that were almond shaped no longer. They were wide, staring, glassy like a crystal gazer’s. “Theirs. Vérène’s.” “O little odd Vérène. No. Not from her. No I never had much faith in Vérène save as a house-wife.” “
Was she a spectator then? Was she to be always looking, watching, seeing other people’s lives work out right? Hermione seemed to herself suddenly forgotten. As old maids must feel turning out lavender letters, letters gone dim and smelling of sweet lavender. Was she then lost? It seemed suddenly that she must clutch, find something. Herself was it? “I don’t seem to understand this sudden fury of engagements.” “O it’s natural.” “I suppose so—” But it wasn’t. It was somehow queer and twisted. .
No, no. It wasn’t twisted. Walter wasn’t twisted. What had gone wrong, gone wrong with everything?
But there was one thing to hang on to. These letters that she had swept up from the hall table, the letters that she had picked up from the floor slipped under the door, the letters that she was taking so for granted, as much now of her routine of life as her early morning chocolate or her tooth-brush, became by some turn of events, something super-natural, sub-normal, something that must spell escape, regeneration, beatitude. For wasn’t that just what separated them, separated her now from this slightly ageing (poor darling she was only thirty but Hermione was taut with her youth’s arrogance) Shirley? Wasn’t it just that separated Shirley from Hermione? Shirley was odd and now in the light of the numerous mad engagements Hermione just a little pitied her. Thirty was getting on somehow, someway ageing. Yes, thirty must be an awful age, all done for, labelled, even Vérène saying in a new little, hard little manner, “but we all thought George was going to marry poor Shir-lee.” Vérène was little and tight and suddenly one had lost faith too in Vérène, too busy to care more than smile, lost in a dream, lost in a vague happiness that made her eyes fill with tears and it was too dreadful to be pitied by Vérène. But why pity them? Why pity Hermione? A white staggering Walter stumbled into the little boudoir where Vérène had asked her to wait as “I am seeing some people, dull ones, you know who offer their con-gratulations.” Hermione certainly didn’t want to sit through French visits of congratulation and Walter had escaped, fallen into a little chair that must, it seemed, break under his beautiful massive body, mopped his forehead. “God, this getting married’s horrible.” Had he said that to Vérène? But one expected a man always to feel like that. Then smiling, all alert as Vérène came in to tell them of another gift and the dress won’t be late, its, it’s— ravissante. O it was all ravissante. Ravissante. But God Hermione was like Walter in this. She didn’t want to be married, all satin like Fayne Rabb, all a snare, not even married and now Vérène who was already— But one mustn’t be horrible. Perhaps she wasn’t. Anyhow what did it matter and was marriage always a sham, a pretence like this was? Ravissante. But the letters that at first she had so taken with her tooth-brush, with her morning chocolate became by a turn of events, different. Letters were different now, might mean something. Letters in the light of Shirley just turned thirty might mean something. Must mean something. George at Shirley’s and George was vague like a magic lantern picture, all colour and no body. He didn’t matter. Even his little jibes didn’t any more matter. It seemed odd Shirley having him so much there, lost, it appeared, in intimate talk. Had George then come to explain, to make it all right, to get things on some kind of basis with this Shirley? But what anyhow did that matter? Letters that had meant nothing now began to mean things. “Streets. One goes through them with one’s eyes shut and one’s eyes open because there at Piccadilly Circus I bought some violets. Piccadilly. I go down Regent Street sometimes and do you remember the crocuses you wanted to see at Hampton Court? Only Americans see these things. But you just aren’t. Do you remember that vale in Thessaly? But of course you don’t. You have other things more precious to remember. Thanks for the Correggio. Funny but it is like me a little. Isn’t it hot now in Paris? O tell me what the places look like. Chestnuts. I may be coming over later if I get that reviewing of the Guardian. Jerrold.”
15
Darrington got his job, came over. Paris suddenly became (with the coming of Darrington) Paris. Space existed as space, Paris as Paris. Vérène someone little and tight that Jerrold had to be taken to see. Vérène being charming, in Vérène’s eyes it was all right now. Hermione was no longer (not that she ever had exactly been) in the same catalogue as “poor Shirl-ee.” Shirley herself being a little vague, lost talking on and off in bright spurts about Pater, about Landor. Darrington finding Shirley clever, sparks flying, George making a little mew-call from the divan in the corner. “Ain’t you ever, Dryad, going to speak to me again properly?” “I can’t see that I, George, haven’t.” “Whats the matter? Why so standoffish, Dryad.” In the light of Darrington’s arrival, she could afford to sting out at him, “don’t you think, George, it was a little, just a little — odd—” “Odd, Dryad?” “I mean if you were engaged all that time — to — kiss me.” “The odd thing is not to kiss you, Dryad.” “No. I don’t like it—” George had pulled her down beside him where he curled half hidden by the very grand baby-grand. “Listen Dryad darling—” “O George you might — you might have told me—” “Dryad developing a Puritan conscience—” “No. No that isn’t the argument. It doesn’t — seem — right—” “Well, Dryad as I never see my — ah — fiancée save when surrounded by layers of its mother, by its family portraits, by its own inhibitions, by the especial curve of the spiral of the social scale it belongs to, I think you might be — affable.” “Would you be affable if I were engaged to — to — Darrington?” “Are you?” “I didn’t say I was or wasn’t. Would you?” But George’s only answer to that was a crude drawing her toward him and the baby-grand with its baby-grand manner scowling its disapproval. O it looked hideous, servant-girlish as she saw them in the polished surface of the very grand baby-grand. A little distorted, a distorted vague Hermione pushing away, a distorted heavy George. It was ugly, a lacquer caricature in a polished surface. This was what love was, would be, a heavy ruffled shining and yet hard picture. Someone pulling at something, one or the other pulling, the other (or the one) pulling. Pulling and pushing and all the beauty of virginal line and the glory of independence shattered. Pulling, pushing. Grand piano. There. . even though it had been America and Her was caught, glued in her domesticity somehow had more line, more beauty, more reality than this thing. This lost, somehow, already smirched Hermione who was (in the highly polished surface of the baby grand) pulling away from a monkey in its velvet jacket.
Lillian Merrick. The school at Rome. No. This couldn’t conceivably go on forever. Eugenia with her many letters and these last ones, “We may be coming over so your father thinks you may stay. Be sure to see Mrs. de Leinitz and don’t let your summer things be shabby. You hadn’t enough last year and I can’t imagine how you’re managing. We love to hear all about your friends and your good times. I am glad Mrs. Walter Dowel has been so kind to you. How fortunate you are in knowing these brilliant people.” Brilliant people. Yes George in a red monkey jacket, Fayne with a white face painted like a circus rider, Fayne doing her little “stunt” balancing on toe on a white galloping stallion and holding two clowns (Llewyn and Morrison?) balanced on quivering buttocks. Not hers. The buttocks of the great white horse, and Fayne Rabb pirouetting in white face and white frilled petticoats, Fayne turned from Pygmalion with strong sturdy thighs and staunch young shoulders into a parody of womanhood. Doing her little prize stunt for the world to see. “But you can’t
No, one didn’t marry. One did stunts. But she wasn’t any longer interested in George. “Don’t rumple and ruffle my dress.” “Since when Dryad, have you begun to worry about dresses?” “Since this minute.”
Hermione emerged from behind the shelter of the very grand baby-grand piano. “Shirley, we never ask you to play for us—” “Gawd, don’t ask her—” Shirley looked up an odd twist to her fine straight eye-brows. A white flame of pain crossed her eyes, dark eyes, wide apart staring like a crystal gazer’s. Why had George said that? Was he being rude simply? But now his rudeness seemed insanity, seemed blatant cruelty. His rudeness, his casual approach to both of them, for she was sure he had kissed, had long been kissing Shirley. Don’t marry him or her — just go on kissing them. Well, what anyhow did it matter. Wide flame of pain in the almond eyes of Shirley flashed, went, and the almond eyes of Shirley were just odd almond eyes with a little glow of passion. “O George is like that. He thinks I play so badly.” Play badly? Was that it? Was that the thing between them? Hermione knew there had been something there. Something that had drawn her near though so straightly separated, from Shirley. “O but you don’t — I’m sure you don’t. I know you do play nicely.” It was Darrington. For a moment pain swept away and Hermione loved Darrington. Darrington who was making her write again, who was bringing almond eyes back to their normal level of just rather odd blank kindness. Shirley was very kind. Little suppers, tea at any time, people coming and going. It must be lovely to have such a charming flat, a place you could see people, not crowding odd hours in at the Louvre, in restaurants, in tea-shops. It was exhausting never being able to talk properly to Darrington. Shirley was very fortunate, clever too, that was what was wrong really with Shirley. She was clever.
“The trouble is you’re too clever to be a real musician.” “O?” “I feel it. You could write. Criticism. The two don’t go together.”
What was lies, what was truth in all this? But this wasn’t true. This table, this chair, this supper, this coffee after supper, this cigarette. But was this true, just this, this smoke wreathing up and up in the rose-shaded light of the lamp casting its again shaded glow through the half drawn curtain of the inner room beyond the wide French window. Was this true? Was this smoke curling up and up and the numb beatific column of its beauty quite true? “I’m glad I’ve at last taught you to smoke properly.” The voice at her elbow as part of the vagueness of the cigarette was true in the same sense that the smoke was true. Darrington’s voice. Darrington’s voice had always been true for it had always (from the first) been vague, been apprehended through a sort of trance state as first apprehended in that vague drawing room somewhere (London?) where George had made pronouncements on sandal wood and thy painted bark. Whose painted bark? “O George I thought you’d written them to
Walter said, “I shouldn’t exactly say that Vérène. She had ideas.” “What sort of ideas?” “O, things that you — wouldn’t — follow—” And someone laughed, was it Vérène simply, blind in her arrogance, full and blown open like a summer rose? The wind had ruffled her petal, the lordly king-wind had stooped from the North, had swept down from the cold irradiance of glaciers to embrace her. Vérène might laugh proud in her little moment. Rose that the wind must pass.
“O I thought her rather odd — her eyes — charming—” Hermione said this. She had thought her odd, began to see her as charming now that she was wreathed about with smoke, with lilac-blue that was the odd and prevalent image of the vague sensation of rest and of recognition Darringtons voice brought her. It had been that way from the first. Darrington had been a voice before he was a presence. He was a presence now, permeated as white wine with alcohol. Alcohol was crude, a poison without the white wine. Darrington’s voice was the distillation of pure aether. What was his voice? Again it broke across her musings. “Old Lowndes, it appeared, was one time thick with her.”
The thing that Darrington said was not exactly the right thing to say on the verge of George Lowndes’ engagement. But that was the nice thing about Darrington. He said the wrong thing in the right voice. There was something piquante, engaging in his manner. He said these things deliberately, one felt he knew he said them, not crudely like George, with his “for Gawd’s sake don’t,” when they had asked Shirley to play for them. Walter said, “yes, we thought here, she was going to marry him.”
Talk about Shirley, about nothing, about something. It appeared suddenly to Hermione cruel, petty, unmitigatedly mean to talk this way about Shirley. She supposed, with a little shiver of apprehension that this is the way they would (obviously) go on about her if she stayed hanging on much longer, alone, not with her people, a bit of drift-wood. But there was Darrington. “Darrington to the rescue.” There was Darrington. But she must do something — do something. Smoke of cigarette. Let me smoke, forget. Let me forget simply. What was it that she wanted to forget and was forgetting? She tried numbly to recall the thing she was forgetting. Walter spoke anticipating her thought, her half remembered image, “funny that girl marrying.” “What girl?” It was Vérène asking. “That friend of Hermione’s. Fayne Rabb.”
“Mademoiselle is dead.” The maid said this simply. She made no gesture of apology. Something was lacking. People didn’t say in French, “Mademoiselle is dead.” They didn’t say in English “Miss est morte.” “Mademoiselle est morte.” That is what she said. Was it possible that Hermione had mistaken it. Was she saying, Mademoiselle is out, or had she forgotten her French, did morte mean asleep or gone away to the country or married or engaged or writing a grand opera? It might, it appeared mean any of these things but it couldn’t possibly mean what the word meant in the dictionary. Hermione had never to her knowledge heard this word, pronounced so blatantly. Morte. Or was it Morgue? Morgue, a place for dead people. The idea did not enter her head. Her heart stopped beating. “But Mademoiselle asked me here for tea; it
The maid in her ordinary voice assured Hermione that it was Sunday. Hermione assured the maid that she had been asked for Sunday. They continued in their odd detached way to argue for it couldn’t be true what she said. Shirley wasn’t dead.
Shirley wasn’t dead. It was impossible. There were a thousand things she might have said to her. Shirley with eyes gone wide like a crystal gazer’s. Hermione had suspected something terrible. What was terrible? Was marriage — no it was death — terrible? “But we thought she was going to marry George.” Little May day communicants going to church in long veils and long frocks and white slippers and hands crossed over prayer-books. Brides of God. Little wise virgins. Virgins. Shirley was a virgin. That was what made them laugh, asking why she didn’t marry George Lowndes. Soon they would laugh at Hermione who hadn’t married George Lowndes. “But of course you can’t
But who killed her? Walter was looking at Vérène, Vérène was looking at Walter. The letter lay between them. Shadows in the room. “How dreadful for you, Hermione.” Someone was saying it was dreadful for Hermione. Someone was breaking the silence that lay between Vérène and Walter, the silence that became tighter and harder like an ice floe that becomes harder the harder the river presses on it. Someone should say something. Someone did. It was Darrington. “But poor Hermione rushed out to tea. I was to meet her there. I met her coming back — on the stairs.” Someone had met someone. Who? Darrington had met Hermione. “Darrington to the rescue.” Someone was thinking in all this of Hermione. But Hermione looked at Walter, looked at Vérène. Walter though he did not turn his head, felt Hermione. He felt Hermione staring as he had felt her in his music. He knew Hermione was there though he was looking at Vérène. Must they all feel sorry for Vérène because Vérène had done it? But had Vérène done it? Who had killed Shirley. The letter lay on the floor. Walter was twisting one great hand with great strong fingers. Fingers that had begun at three, tiny fingers, going on and on and Walter had that kind of power, detached power. It was detached power that had killed Shirley. Walter simply. It was Walter’s music. “But how was — I—to — know—” Walter was asking this of the void though Vérène as usual thought anything addressed to the void by Walter was meant for her. She would mother Walter. O don’t let me see her mothering Walter. “It wasn’t — your — fault— Vrrralter.” No. Don’t let him know it was his fault for it was his fault. The letter said so though she had not read the letter. She had found Walter reading the letter as she stumbled in to Clichy. She had rushed to them. . a letter had reached Walter. What did the letter say? It was on the floor there. Pick up the letter, someone, its shameful lying on the floor — no, I didn’t see her. She was lying on the floor. Anyone could look at her, inspectors, horrible people for she was outside the law. She couldn’t be cremated. She had killed herself. She had left another letter asking to be cremated. Did it matter? But she couldn’t be. All these letters, meaning nothing, meaning everything. They had all killed her.
George had killed her certainly. It was Walter saying it, “But we thought she was going to marry — George.” George must be blamed, scape-goat. He was a scape-goat. Kissing them all. Let all the sins of all the kisses be upon him. For this was a sin. Kisses that had killed Shirley. Vérène was making it right, was trying to make it right. “She should have married — someone.” She should have married. Then it would have been all right. Then she wouldn’t have been a virgin, gone mad, simply, like Cassandra. Shirley was like Cassandra smitten by the sun-god. Music. Walter.
Music could kill people. Love could kill people. It was Hermione who had killed her. Hermione on May-day might have reached her. Shirley looking wan and odd, seeing that Hermione was unhappy Shirley had seen this. Hermione might have reached across, said simply, “I am so unhappy.” Hermione hadn’t done this. Hermione had killed her.
“But I killed her.” “You are mad, dear child. She fell in love with Walter. The letter made it all clear. Vérène asked me, as someone from outside to read the letter. I read it carefully. Dementia. Suicide in the family. She was obsessed with the idea of some white afterlife, words like that. I can’t remember. It was a touching document. She died of love simply.” “No. I might have helped. I was so immersed in my own idiotic little petty hurt, I couldn’t see her. She asked me to come to her house that first day, May-day, in such an odd voice. If I hadn’t been so immersed in myself, so shattered with the web of myself, I would have seen her. Myself had wound round myself so that I was like a white spider shut in by my own hideous selfishness. I should have been a bird, a sort of white star or bird winging up and up and up — I’m not religious. The Rabbs said I wasn’t. I should have been a sort of saint, a sort of flaming thing loving my martyrdom. I should have been white and clear and like a sword at the head of armies or a banner in the hands of soldiers. I should have said love is like this, see I have loved and I am a banner, a star. It would have hurt me to have said that and I didn’t want to be hurt. I was too small. I let my own petty pain wind about me. I let myself be obscured by myself and I became a white spider hidden in web, a mesh of self. A grey hideous web, I can almost see it. Fayne Rabb killed her.”
“Killing and not-killing have nothing to do with it. The letter made it all clear. She had been in love with Walter for some years. She couldn’t go on any longer with it—” “It isn’t true. It’s all lies. No one of us is in love with any one of us. What is love? A circus dancer with a white horse balancing to a fanfare on the back of a black stallion. Circus dust, spectators. What is love? A monkey in a velvet jacket reflected in the back of a polished hand-organ, embracing a white satyress. What is love? A parody — smoke wreathing between lilac bushes, another in a crinoline or a bustle, a dart catching a feather in a gallant hat, a march, a drum, a beating, a forgetting, a memory, I send thee Rhodocleia for thy hair—” “Astraea.” “What is Astraea? What are we all? You are the only one that said a kind word to her—” “Astraea, you exaggerate. You were very nice to her, always.” “Nice? Sheer nice as anyone might have been nice. I, with my flair for rightness, my spirit, my wings. I the thing that Walter said drew out his music, the nymph, the Dryad. I the Spirit you all talk about sat and watched another topple — topple — fall—” “Astraea. This is all wrong, morbid of you.” “I have lost faith in the thing they loved so. Walter saying I drew music out of him. What is music to a soul lost?” “It isn’t lost. Her soul isn’t—” “Plato says we are servants of the gods. No servant can neglect his work. To kill oneself is to drop out, lacking in service.” “The gods won’t look hard on her, Hermione.” “Maybe not. It’s me, I’m thinking of. What have I been doing? Where have I been? Wandering in a maze. Hermione this. Hermione that. An angel, a saint, a poet, a child. I am none of these things.”
“You are all of these things.” “I’m tired of this. I’m sick of my own attitude. What is Fayne Rabb beside this thing? It was so clean. They said she had planned it all so carefully. She left money for the maid’s taxi fare, just the right amount so that she should rush out with that letter to the Dowels. So clean. Not anything horrible. So clean under her breast. All gone. That is true love. That is true marriage. Fear gone. A white bullet—” “Hermione. This thing has upset you. Hermione. .”
Voices down the street. Voices down the hall. Fatigue so great that she held her head up under it, above it like a drowning man gasping, gasping for breath. Herself, the immaculate image, the saint, the spirit, had been shattered for her. Forever. A white bullet had so shattered it. Intuition and fine feeling had not been fine enough to sense this. The very proximity of this other spirit. The very nearness of this authentic sister, tangled in a worse web than she was. Herself had wound about herself blinding herself to the soul’s unhappiness about her. Life had been cruel she had thought. It was herself simply who had been stupid in being so deceived by sheer appearances. Fayne on a white horse led the fantastic circus. Parade round and round a room, parade round and round a world. The whole world was girded by this fantastic procession. Monkeys in velvet jackets jibbered at her. None of the world escaped them. Venice, Prado, Spain, Holland, Dresden— Names came and went like lights flashing on a white screen. Was there no reality in all this? Names and fantastic backgrounds. America, the wilderness, the rockies. How could Americans cope with all this? How could they cope with so much having so many racial strands and counter-impulses? America had killed her.
“I know she was alone too much. She had got away from home. She was, we thought, so happy.” She had got away from home. Shirley had escaped and this happened. Would this happen to them all, to all of them? Darrington might help her to work and she could have something, claim something out of all this. Spain in the Californias. Strains of Dutch and Latin in their make-ups. Coming back to Europe. Flaming out like marsh-lights, brilliant with no roots. Here and there, trying to get lost. Henry James lost in Sussex marshes. One after another but she wouldn’t be lost. Henry James wasn’t really lost. Not Henry James, not Whistler, not Sargent. Lost yet not lost in London.
France was a book of beauty and of terror. Rising up to the highest attainment, Walter talking of notes in the air, beyond the air, harps. It was Walter who had killed her. .
PART II
1
Darrington came across the room. Candles made a smudge in the distance. How far away was the other side of the room? It wavered and fell. It fell and wavered. Perhaps next time it really would fall down. “Jerrold.”
Darrington came across the room. He sat on her bed, their bed. She hadn’t really gone to bed, just piled the cushions behind her back and sat up and sat up and listened. Darrington came as he had always come at her voice, coming toward her, his head bent forward, his yellow French book half open in his hand. “Jerrold.” “Darling.” Darrington called her darling, had always called her darling, had been calling her darling forever. “Where — am I?”
“You’re right here, here right enough. Thank God we got you out of that damned nursing home.” “Yes. I forget. Keep forgetting. The funniest thing was when they stood at the end of my bed and told me about the crucified—” “Hush. Hush darling.” “Jerrold.” “Darling?” “Are there any men left, any at all in the streets, not, not in khaki?”
“Keep quiet. Don’t talk. Don’t talk about it, darling.” “I can’t think. Can’t think about anything else and yet all night (is it night?) my head has been going round and round. You remember that girl I almost forgot.” “Which girl Astraea?” “That American girl that crossed with me — when just was it?” “You mean when you first crossed, two years before the war.” “Yes two years before the war. Where was it?” “Where was what?” “Someone, something got — killed.” “Hush darling — don’t talk about killed.” “I don’t mean the nursing home. I don’t mean the horror of the nurses. I can talk of that now. I don’t mean their taking me into the cellar — while — it — was happening. I know they took me into the cellar. I know the baby was dead. I know all that. I’m not afraid of talking about it. Really Jerrold.” “Hush. Hush darling.” “I mean long ago, something happened long and long ago — the other side of a chasm. Someone. Something. A silver bullet—” “Don’t talk of bullets darling.”
“Read Browning to me.” “What just do you want dear and the room’s too dark; can’t turn on the electricity till the raid’s over.” “Read anything — your voice — it was always your voice — sometimes in the worst times, I hear your voice. I wouldn’t have minded if they hadn’t been so horrid to — you—” “Do keep still. Don’t fidget. Now rest there.” Darrington pulled the cushion to a flat plateau, lifted her by the shoulders, pushed her into the down cushions, “now don’t talk.”
“What shall I read, darling?” “That thing about Fortù—Fortù, was it? The Englishman in Italy, you know what I mean. It takes me back to Sorrento, to Ana-Capri. It makes things come right.
“
“Go on, go on reading. Don’t let anything stop you. Go on. It will make things come right. Go on reading. Don’t let anything stop you. After all percussion or something only broke all the upstairs windows last time. . they may do better this time. .”
“
“Butterflies fighting makes me forget. Funny my being alone. And it was gone, all Italy was gone. Amalfi was gone. . Amalfi’s gone with that crash. They’re trying for Euston station but they’ve got Amalfi. . the things one didn’t know were real, until shattered by unreality. . guns, guns, guns, guns. Our own gun makes more noise but it rattles nicely, just over us that anti-aircraft. . Amalfi. They’ve got Amalfi this time. The zeppelins and the anti-aircraft guns are both shattering Amalfi. Butterflies fighting, some five for one cup. . did you say some five for one cup? Somewhere butterflies are fighting. . but what butterfly can fight against this thing any longer? I should never have dreamed five butterflies could fight some five for one cup. And why did we come here? Because that plaster Flora was spilling her plaster basket of plaster rose rosette roses like the one (almost) on the long road to Ana-Capri. Do you remember why we took these rooms? That was why. No. Don’t speak. Hold me closer. They always try for Euston. It was because that plaster Flora spilled her plaster flowers and we remembered she was just a little like the one in the Signorina’s garden. Oranges were in flowers. . winter blossom and winter Hebridean apples, gold winter oranges above Mediterranean water. My grandfather said of all the things he wanted to see in Europe (we always spoke of Europe in those days, not France, not England, not Germany, just Europe) was the Bay of Naples. The Bay of Naples. . . that was near enough. I can’t get any exaltation out of bombs bursting. God knows I’ve conscientiously
“Why do you ask that? It’s almost three years now.” “One year before the war. Italy and coming back just in time and everything broken, everyone scattered. . everything different. Italy. . is Italy different? But it can’t be. Italy would be the same if all the Huns of all the universe (who exactly are Huns?) should over-run it. Things now are like Gibbon. The decline and Fall. This is history, I suppose. Go on reading.”
“
“Yes. And lizards everywhere. Flowers burnt out of rocks, like volcanic embers. Those red anemones. O yes. Everything will come right. Everything has come right.
“
“I did taste. . but it’s gone. They’ve broken it. .”
“
“It was you who taught me to love those things, Capri Nero, Capri Bianco, cigarettes, the pear trees against Solaro were a mass of blossom and there were prickly pear and cactus. The small goats scampered before us and there was that singular goat-herd (for a long time we thought we’d dreamed it) piping under that one clump of cool willows. Cool willows and below, so far below that one could for a breath have flung oneself down, the sea. The sea. Thalassa. Yes, it was Greece, not like Tuscany. We had Greece, having Italy.”
“
“So I turned to the sea. Do you remember? I went first. You were heavier. You were surprised and I loved plaguing you. You had only seen me in London and in Paris and you had no idea what I was like really. You found what I was like really. I think it frightened you. Open my heart and you will see engraved inside of it Italy. How could I have known, loving France, loving England that I would love so much better, Italy? France is a polished gem, a priceless intaglio, England is a great wide rose spread just before its falling, Italy is a live ember burning the hearts of men.”
Now why must he do this? Why must he do this? She might have known he would do this, clutching her in his arms, the moment she was happy with him. Everything had come clear talking of Italy. Images smudged, as it were, on a square of thick glass were smudged out by this Sirocco rain they read of. Italy and the talk of Italy had washed out the black, dark grey and khaki-coloured images. Khaki images were splashed like mud across the clear window of her mind and now the clear images of beauty, the gaudy melon flower, the rock islets showed clear. She looked through her mind into a far country. Pays lointain. . pro patria. She looked through a clear glass far and far and just before her as if the wall of the room had parted, she was looking through between columns (the two sides of the enormous book-case) into a fair country, rocks, the silver lentisk, the white plaques of sea-rosemary, a flute in the distance and the lines of Theocritus. Why must Darrington now spoil it? Hadn’t she had enough? Months and months of waiting and now this. Now this, this curious weakness and this reward of weakness; the mind clarified past all recognition, herself gazing through her mind into a fair country. There was no wind. The sea so far below gave no sound. A boy far and far and far was pulling a boat and colours familiar through cheap water colours all their lives took vivid form, were prismatic colours seen through crystal. The walls of cone-shaped Vesuvius and the jagged edge of Capri, the wall that was Capri was rising out of the sea, an island, a Greek island, the island where Odysseus heard the Syren voices. Little plots of earth set like bright rugs on the vertical island mountain, were bright marigolds, and clumps of early winter flowering irises. Irises, white, yellow, blue and lavender. Marguerites growing in enormous balls of white flower made the immaculate white walls a shade more subtle — shell grey. Oranges were flowering and against citron flowers great globes of ripe fruit, rocks and the crevices and the slopes of trees and flax flowers laid like rugs, true gardens of the Hesperides. A church bell (a cathedral bell) was ringing and it was Easter. “Do you remember that odd poor Christ we said looked like Adonis?” Darrington remembered, but he didn’t really care as she cared. He was living in the present and its terror.
Why didn’t he go then if he felt like this? He said he would wait now for conscription, he was dead sick of hypocrisy and can’t his “gov’nor” try to get him into a snobby regiment for the family kudos. Family. Kudos. But she was sick, so weak that she only wanted him to go, to go away somewhere, somehow quickly. Everyone took it out on her, would do when she got a little stronger. Nurses bending over her. . watching her. . asking. . no, no. It was impossible. There was no such criminal cruelty in any world, never never in England. She had dreamed a horrible dream and reality was different. Reality that she looked at, propped on the heavy cushions while the guns went on, went on, went on, was something very different. Guns dropped sound like lead-hail and if the guns were quiet they might hear some more pertinent manifestation. One like last time, an enormous shattering, breaking and tearing. . guns over-head were better though they dropped lead hail that beat and seared her brain, brought pain back to her consciousness. “O Mrs. Darrington. Everything’s arranged beautifully. There is at the moment, only one other — in— your — state.” Only two of them. Only two of them waiting. But the other woman had a husband in France so they were nicer to her. O God. Why isn’t my husband in France? Guns, guns, guns. Let him at least have the decency to leave me, let me lie here listening. I love listening. Maybe the next one will crash on us. Then I will go simply through the two tall columns (two upright edges of the enormous book-case) into a land that claims me. Patriotism. “There was that Austrian poet at Corpo di Cava, do you remember?” Darrington remembered but there was an odd wide glare to his eyes. He was thinking like those nurses of the cellar.
“Darling wouldn’t it be better — in — your — condition—” “No. No. No. I can’t go downstairs with all the other people. At least it’s cool here and so quiet—” “
“But you don’t care?” “Darling. You — know — I—do—” Guns were quiet. Tea steamed into her face and she drank the fumes of the tea like some drug fiend, the scent of drug. Tea smelt of far sweet hours, of afternoons of all the happy little times they’d had together. Darrington had made the tea while she lay listening. He was nice, did nice things. She supposed he really did care, had been sorry. It’s so hard for a man to say such things. He knew it hurt her to talk about the baby. She supposed he had cared. He wouldn’t have let her go through it, almost a year and her mind glued down, broken, and held back like a wild bird caught in bird-lime. The state she had been in was a deadly crucifixion. Not one torture (though God that had been enough) but months and months when her flaming mind beat up and she found she was caught, her mind not taking her as usual like a wild bird but her mind-wings beating, beating and her feet caught, her feet caught, glued like a wild bird in bird-lime. Darrington hadn’t known this. No one had known this. No one would ever know it for there were no words to tell it in. How tell it? You can’t say this, this. . but men will say O she was a coward, a woman who refused her womanhood. No, she hadn’t. But take a man with a flaming mind and ask him to do this. Ask him to sit in a dark cellar and no books. . but you mustn’t. You can’t. Women can’t speak and clever women don’t have children. So if a clever woman does speak, she must be mad. She is mad. She wouldn’t have had a baby, if she hadn’t been. Darrington had said he would “take care of her.” Did they always say that? Darrington had said he would take. . but he was, he had made the tea, had brought her the tea. He had been reading Browning and the words had cleared her mind, swept away horrors like clean rain on a mud spattered window. Darrington had read her,
Words had fused with her horror and the memories that weren’t real, like a drug. Words were a drug. Darrington had given her this drug.
Darrington had given her words and the ability to cope with words, to write words. People had been asking her (just before the war) for poems, had written saying her things had power, individuality, genius. Darrington had done this. Therefore she must remember, try to remember, try to be things she had been before the war — no before
Unmarried men were going, had gone. They would soon get Darrington. God, God, God, God, God. Why hadn’t he gone? Why didn’t he go? People’s faces—“O Mrs. Darrington. It’s so funny. You’re the only woman here whose husband isn’t. .” Isn’t? God. But it was true. Guns. Guns. Guns. Thank God she had suffered to the sound of guns and the baby wasn’t. . dead. . not born. . still born. . but it didn’t matter. “Darling but — you — don’t — care — any — more.”
2
“Jerrold, but I do care.” By a super-human effort, she lifted her face to his and smothered under his kisses, she went on with it, “yes, I do care awfully,” for what did it matter? It didn’t matter. It wasn’t real and what she was doing had no reality, no meaning. It was one with drab walls, walls of drab men that stood between her and — guns, guns, guns. But Darrington would go soon, would go to France soon, so that she could lift up her face to his and let his arms (khaki arms now) hold her close, close, “being away from you has made the difference. I see what you are now, have always been.” She would have to go on with it, no matter what might happen for his arms were khaki arms now and soon he might be dead, dead — what a relief. No, she mustn’t think things like that. Had she thought it? No, she hadn’t thought it. She had never thought it. “You’ve made everything so lovely here. I never realized how huge the room was. Dinner was so charming with the white wine.” White wine? Where had it come from? White wine. Delia had sent her some white wine, saying she looked peaked, Delia being heavenly, everyone being heavenly because of Jerrold being in Khaki, they were being nice to her though everyone was gone. Did they think she wanted another baby? Were they being nice to her hoping she might have one? Was there nothing else in the world? Men and guns, women and babies. And if you have a mind what then? But there were men with minds, must be men with minds, feeling as she did and it wasn’t so bad, now Darrington was in khaki. Going to France soon. She must keep up. “Where did the white wine come from?” “O Delia sent it, delicious Delia, done up in uniform, hateful meetings—” but she mustn’t be horrid about Delia. They were all busy, all the pretty drawing room turned into a red cross section and she knew she ought to have gone on making swabs but it was so horrible, not seeing swabs but what they were meant for, and talking, how they gossiped and Delia working so hard. Poor Delia something had gone out of her. Delia however hard Hermione might try to think it, wasn’t the same. She had lost her soul somehow in this mess, this work room, this lint, this cotton wool. But no. It was Hermione who was horrid. How horrid to hate them, all the women who went on talking as if they were enjoying it, and the worst of it was one felt they
Thank God at least she was on this side of the chasm. She hadn’t thank God, gone (as Jerrold wanted her) to America. “Jerrold was mad wanting me to go to the States.” “Poor Jerrold.” Why did Delia say poor Jerrold. “Why did you say that Delia?” “I don’t know. After all he
Henry James died of it, their great American, and they said Americans didn’t care. Didn’t care. Some didn’t. But when they did, O Gawd, as George used to put it. George. How could he go on wearing the same spotted speckled mosaic of cravats? But poor Georgio. One never shoved anyone into it, couldn’t. Not even Darrington. Guns, guns, guns, and how small they looked like a little pack of hornets, so near and so small, a whole flotilla of little planes this time and how brave of them. How low they were flying, people talking of poisonous gas and people straining upward and all in the daylight, you couldn’t say they weren’t remarkable, extraordinarily brave, extraordinary super-human courage to fly low over London in full noonlight. And the crash that followed and would follow and all of us blinking up into a lead-grey light that was the full noon glare, how could they do it, and all of us really marvelling that they were so brave really, English people, so surprised, all of us were so surprised that noon seeing them fly so low. We all said they must be “us,” we all said hearing the stifle and the low growl, “no, it’s them.” We all marvelled saying “baby killers,” watching one, two three, all flying in a neat formation. “Those beasts. Baby-killers.” Yes, that was true. How odd that the most blatant of journalese should be true, the most banal and obvious things were now true, the war had made things like that true. Hermione had never read, listened as little as she could until this became true. “Baby-killers.” The most obvious and low level of horrors, O Gawd, and prose and poetry and the Mona Lisa and her eye lids are a little weary and sister my sister, O fleet sweet swallow were all smudged out as Pompeii and its marbles had been buried beneath obscene filth of lava, embers, smouldering ash and hideous smoke and poisonous gas. Was London still there? It was hard, would be hard to find it. Some of them might be left, there might be an afterwards and then some of them would get to work and dig, dig deep down and unearth all the old treasures. There was no use remembering the treasures, the cold, sweet uplifted arm of some marble Hermes, the tiny exquisite foot and bird-like ankle of some Aphrodite. Those things were being buried and all they could do was to watch, to stand in little groups and knots and after all with the volcano belching its filth over them, they were all one, must be all one, fear, terror, the obstinate courage that refused its terror made them one, facing bright hawks in an odd grey poisonous noon that swooped and swooped and we all said, “it can’t be them, it’s
“What darling?” “How can you — go on — with — this? You’re looking more and more ill. It’s killing you.” “It — has — killed—” O God. Hermione was forgetting. So many were dead. She had forgotten that Tony whom she hardly knew was out of it, “gone west,” but he was away so much, the house always seemed Delia’s property and Delia was above suspicion though people had a way (as people did in those days) of a little pitying Delia. Women would, of course, Delia being so beautiful, so chaste in that odd American-Greek manner in spite of what people said, when Americans were like that, they were high and pure and divine and Delia was like that and Lillian Merrick was like that. Tall and cold, new England, that was another name for a transplanted England that was more English than England, more Greek than Greek. Delia was like that. Lillian was like that. Hermione had forgotten Tony, there were so many Englishmen (had been so many Englishmen) like that and Tony was so often in Africa and so often he was running across to France. France. Tony was in France for good. Hermione had forgotten Tony. “Delia?” “Darling—” But what could she say to Delia? She couldn’t now say chuck it, they’re exploiting you, they’re killing you, they’re beasts, devils, they are more cruel than the wasp-devils who fly low over London and at least have their courage, their panache, what are these devils? Nothing. They don’t even have children for the other devils to kill. We are in it. Killing and being killed. Who are these? Obscene rows of suppressed women, not women, but some of them have lost sons. O, don’t let me be cruel. I am so muddled. Poor Tony. “I never — knew — Tony.” “He was like that, Hermione. No one ever knew him. He said I was aloof and—” “Cold, Delia?” “Cold, darling. Yes, how did you know?” “It’s the sort of thing they say.” “
3
O put it on, put it on, how funny I look, like a doll now. I am a doll but it will amuse him. He said Merry Dalton was so “cute,” he said cute like that not knowing it was so silly, so full of silly school-girl silliness to an American. English people picked up American words, used them in such an odd way, “cute.” He said little Mary Dalton looked “cute” and Mary (they called her Merry now) was setting the pace for everything. Poor Merry. Hermione had suddenly got across to her, saw her in one tremendous instant. But it was wrong Merry sympathizing with the Irish (though she was half-Irish) it was all wrong. But one was so tired of this disciplined death, this row of people one loved gone, all gone, nice people who did the right thing gone, one might as well find out how the others lived, for one couldn’t believe that Delia’s, that Lady Prescott’s red-cross section represented the whole of life. Being good, being good, rolling, unrolling lint until her fingers ached and she knew she would go mad but anything was excused when one’s husband came back, “no. I won’t be here for another ten days, five days, three days, (what was it) my husband is due across.” Husband. Husband. But this wasn’t a husband. One might as well sleep with a navvy from the street only there weren’t any, they were all soldiers, but this person was as strange, more strange to her than Captain Ned Trent whose father had been
Now looking at Louise, Hermione wished she hadn’t made up, couldn’t do it like Louise. Louise must really help her with some clothes. She was tired of the old old gold and green that swept away from her shoulders. For a breath her body would be bare. Half a league — half a league — half a league — Captain (pre-war) Trent had known that, known all about it. They said he had heat wave, sun stroke, wouldn’t shoot him but the police were after him, all the same and Merry, poor pretty Merry (why did one now like her?) had taken him on — taken him in— But could it matter? Hiding him. Pre-war romance. There is romance. Dance for the candles flicker, the boy with one arm leans forward. Louise tilts back a dark head. Florient.
A goddess is a god less — where did that come from? God and goddess, God and god less — what was going on, round and round and round and there were no two ways about it, you had to be in it or out of it and going on and on and on at Delia’s was stagnation, was not her work, was not her world. She didn’t believe in it, didn’t believe in those hard lipped women (O God forgive me) who worked like that not knowing what love was, not knowing what life was. It was different with Delia but Delia was noblesse oblige and Delia anyhow was older, was that other generation, like Lillian Merrick, just old enough to be a very young mother to her or an elder sister. Delicious older sister. She had never had one. They weren’t, it appeared, delicious. Relatives weren’t. But Delia was a sort of older sister but you couldn’t keep it up, half here, half there, half seeing that Delia was right and being sorry that they had lost sons and the other half saying but damn, damn, damn, why did you let them go, why did you let them go? You have lost sons but what have they lost, what have
Who are we fighting for? What are we fighting for? Well anyway I’m Darrington’s wife, they’ll give me a little pension. O God, why don’t they all go home now? Can’t they see that we’re all tired but they seem to love staying, the boy with one arm, looks and looks and looks. . what does he see against the wall? What does he see between the books, the other side of the curtains the uneven, untidy rows of books are making? Does he see what I am seeing, what I used to be seeing, the days long ago, 17, 17, 17. Seventeen was long ago but even in seventeen Darrington had plunged in suddenly from the north of England, from his training camp, had plunged in, running his hands along the books as if they were some sleek cat’s back, running his hands over separate books like so many loved kittens. He never took books out now. He said Browning was a bore, he was of course, was he? Fortù, Fortù, my beloved sit here and the gaudy melon flower. What was the boy seeing looking at the books? Was he seeing the books or beyond the books? Going on and on and on. Over the top, certainly, and certainly the best of luck. Napoo fini. Fini la guerre. Napoo fini everything, Fini la guerre, nothing. It would never be. Might as well dance, who was one anyhow to prate of virtue? Going on and on and on, only I wish Florient wouldn’t sit on Captain Trent’s lap, after all he is a gentleman and he treats us somehow (some of us) like what the boy with one arm would have called “ladies.” Gentlemen and ladies, ladies and gentlemen, let me show you the prize secret of the universe, an elephant with two trunks, a fat lady with a beard, a duck with two heads. Monsters. Were they all monsters? No use living in two worlds, got to choose, going on and on but how can I choose, Darrington (lieutenant Darrington) is my husband. Did you know? Look at me, look at me, tall thin emaciated child with one arm, I know, I understand. I feel. I am. I am all those things you stare at. Don’t stare. Don’t stare. Over the top. .
“Why can’t we have some more drinks?” “Drinks. Drinks. You know as well as I.” They were bickering like a navvy and a pub keeper’s wife. Life was like that. You wore life like a white flower to be tossed aside. But she had so tossed it. She had given her life. She was already dead. She felt so sorry for those others who weren’t dead. If only the boy would know that she was dead too. If only he would stop staring at the books, thinking he was the only one. “What, another raid? O damn. I did want some sleep. Best clear out before the damn thing starts.” It was late. Let them stay and they would stay all night. O go away. Can’t you see how I’m dead, tired, dead tired. Can’t you see I’m dead — tired — dead-tired — tired — dead — go home.
It seems to me I can feel her wings. She is somewhere. She endured. She spills rose petals from her wings and the petals drift down the marble steps of the temple, not of the Louvre, no, I suppose they’ve wrapped her up in excelsior and put her in the cellar. Certainly they would. All the Louvre galleries empty. I had never till this moment thought of all those empty galleries. Must have been the boy in blue, the boy blue, little boy blue — horizon. On the horizon. The far horizon. She stands on the far horizon, though they must have locked her up in the cellar to keep her out of harm’s way, they did
“What were you saying, darling?” “Darling” brought something with it. It was that Naples faun that held the wine jar or was it the marble bronze of the moss-green Narcissus? Was Narcissus still standing in the Naples gallery, with his naif yet so sophisticated gesture, his hand lifted, his head bent forward? Bronze that had been burned as they were burned beneath lava, smoke, ashes, dust, death, years, obliteration. Self of self was so buried. Who had said “darling”? Hermione leaned standing against the table, leaned standing and leaned staring. Who had said what? Who was she? Where was she? Moss green of a small bronze that had been unearthed and was still unpolluted? Should she be the same underneath, after it was all over? Would she be the same, herself the same, a statue buried beneath the kisses of the war, no, beneath the kisses of her husband? Did husband, “my husband” make it any better? What was she going to do, say? What would she think? Her thoughts were not her thoughts. They came from outside. But everyone was like that now, exalté, hungry, it was wonderful not wanting to eat, not worth it, exaltation. Exalted. They were exalted. “Mademoiselle could not drown her exaltation in the dead sea.” A French man had said that but she couldn’t now remember. Someone was coming toward her. “Jerrold.”
“How did you think the party went?” “Has it gone?” Why did she say that? It was a sort of cheap rejoinder, not worthy. Voices in the street. Someone might be returning. People had a way of straggling back for forgotten cigarettes, cases or lost papers or bits of uniforms, “I say Darrington, my word, I’ve left my” (whatever it was) “with you.” Did they make excuses to come back? People, people, people. People loving Darrington. Did they love Hermione? Darrington’s laugh. If only she were more robust, stronger. People loved Darrington. Boy in Blue, boy in khaki. Why do you love Darrington? All the men loving all the men and who could blame them, “you people don’t understand a thing about it.” No, they didn’t understand, knew nothing of the war, scrounging bread off Fritz. Did they really scrounge bread, why did they say such horrible things, “the whole place stank of Fritzes.” One came to accept such statements, over the top. You see, Troy town was down. Town, down. You see there isn’t any use struggling against Darrington for a world away, a world away, a world away the Winged Samothracian Victory is waiting. O if I would die and be out of it. What good is the food after you do get it, waiting in line with filthy devils, really hungry people who do care, do awfully care, after all, we’ve fed our faces all our lives and the things are so filthy when we do get them, they’re no use. Over the top of Troy town. Someone
“Who’s scratching?” “I don’t know. Don’t let’s open.” “But we can’t leave them there. It might be Captain Trent.” “Damn. Trent’s business isn’t now ours.” “Why not?” “Are you mad? He’s an Irish rebel—” “So’s Merry.” “That’s different.”
4
One had to admit it was different when one opened the door and saw her standing like a stage-set, all perfect, like a good curtain call, her strange mauve and old gilt gown making a picture of her. Merry was tall (though she sometimes seemed so tiny) standing against the velvet black drop curtain that was the black-black of the raid-darkened hall. “O, it’s Merry.” She was standing and now in a moment something in Hermione took fire, took flame. Something flamed up in Hermione like the white flame, the white flower boys wore now (invisible to but few of the rest) fastened to their blue or dark-blue or horizon blue or fawn brown uniforms. Merry. “O it’s Merry.” And in speaking Hermione felt something flame up in her, a ghost, a ghost of long ago and a strange poignant hurt that Mary (it was Mary then and Maria della Trinità) had given her. Her name was Princess Lointaine then and Maria della Trinità and that was long ago across a chasm and George Lowndes with his kisses, his scape-goat kisses was out of it, but you couldn’t say Merry was. Names, people. People, names. Merry came from across the chasm the other side, gold daffodils, someone reading poetry, things that weren’t any more true. Names make people. People make names. Her smile was the same jasmine white ghost thing that that flower was, that invisible flower that boys wore pinned so lightly. The flower of Merry’s smile was ghost-jasmine, she wasn’t alive really. Was she alive? How had she got there? Why did she stand there? She hadn’t rung the front bell downstairs. “How did you get in?” “Some of the people from the top-floor were rushing back from somewhere.” “O it’s those munition workers doing night shift. They have the top floor.” But why tell Merry that? Who were girls having the top floor, doing night shift while the rest of them danced and the glasses made islands and the boy with one arm stared and made her heart leap and fall down (a fish half dead that leaps on dry land) and her soul reach out, reach out saying look my white flower is as white as yours but she hadn’t, didn’t say it. “Wh-aats — up?” It was Darrington. Merry walked forward. She walked as an actress who has had her cue. She would, it was apparent, fall forward at the right moment into one of the big chairs. Her cue would be step to right, stagger unsteadily, fall gracefully. But she hadn’t spoken her lines yet. Darrington was standing. Hermione was standing. Take two paces to the right, pull the curtains that are already pulled for there is a faint rumble (a stage rumble) far and far and far. Stage rumble. It reminded her of a melo-dramatic Civil War play that she had seen as a school girl. Rushings, uniforms blue and grey. “They are firing on Richmond to-night.” That play was called “Shenandoah.” What was this? On leave? Permission. Take your choice ladies and gentlemen for we can’t choose the parts we play but we can name our own show. Call it “Permission.” Damn good show. They are firing on Richmond to-night. Troy town was obviously down. “Whaat-s — up?”
“Rather tired, that’s all.” Merry sat in the chair, she didn’t stagger but this didn’t seem right. She had come to say something, wasn’t saying it. Why did she stare white and white, jasmine-white? “Old Trent?” Darrington was a brute. You could see that Darrington was a brute. It couldn’t be possible that he said it and it hadn’t happened. They were in the wrong play. They are firing on Richmond to-night. This was the wrong play. They should be wearing crinolines, being Southern ladies, all made up crinolines,
There was death and they had died a certain death and Jerrold hadn’t. Had Merry absolutely died? She seemed in a state of just not-understanding, for so little she would understand, what was it that was lacking? The story was all right. The story had body, continuity, unity, all the things the right sort of impossible story would have. All the stories now were of a low level of art but they made good stories. Life is, isn’t it, damn bad art, but who had said that? It was the sort of thing Darrington used to say but didn’t any more say. Darrington with his “to the chaste all things are unchaste” and Darrington to the rescue and his Theseus like a sea-rock with the weeds still clinging and his Astraea like a star, a child. . where was that Darrington? There was a chasm, a split, the volcano had so split them and across the other side candles were flaring up and George was reading and it was George saying, “almost thou persuadest me to be a heathen.” People didn’t say things like that, anyway they were silly things to say, but why should they? Why be démodé, it wasn’t à la mode any more to be witty, it was Fritz and Fritz and such vile repetition and his breath breathed into her lungs was that curious death and that curious emanation. He had been in a gas attack for his breath breathed into her lungs bit and burned and she coughed violently after he had gone, thank God that time, he had been hurried up north again, up north, his commission and a little pat from somebody though he was only 171892 for all he was a navvy with the navvies, Jerry, a navvy but rather nice coming back rather brown, rather nice if his breath hadn’t been filled with gas, making her cough, making her cough. Cough. Across a chasm there were candles and daffodils and the hydrangeas that had lifted porcelain blue and wedgwood blue and delft blue and porcelain white and porcelain Sèvres china, Dresden china pink. There is always a tulip on Dresden and sometimes an iris. Flowers on china. Merry was like that, French rather, the Irish were when you came to think of it, after you had had your full dose of England. Merry was like that. Merry already looked different, it took her no time at all to recover. The jasmine had faded from her lips. There was the old pre-chasm red and fox-red though now it had faded to the burnt pale hectic colour of fire swept leaves. She was burnt out, pale in her burning. But there was no jasmine. She was not yet ghost. Merry was sitting there and talking quite naturally. These stories were so natural. “They met us at the corner and Ned said I was to leave him. I don’t know where they took him.” This had happened before. It was always happening. Plain clothes men like some odd, old pre-chasm detective story. Sherlock Holmes. Doctor Watson. All, all those incredible, impossible things had come into life. Life had found its level and those things were on its level. “He asked me to come here. He said Hermione will understand.” Hermione looked at Merry. She did understand. Merry was no ghost jasmine. Colour came back, blue eyes, that looked blue, blue, blue, the delft-blue, the porcelain blue of conservatory hydrangeas. She was not a real flower, not an orchid though her mauve and gold gave her quality, gave her frailty. Was she frail? Didn’t she burn simply where life burned? Didn’t she cultivate Hermione for the life that burned about her? What did Merry see in Hermione? “What are you staring at, seeing?” Merry was staring, her eyes staring. Blue. Blue. “You look — odd.” “I feel odd rather. Nothing the matter. Odd simply.” Hermione was odd. She wasn’t in it, wasn’t out of it. She didn’t love Merry Dalton, didn’t hate her. She couldn’t condemn poor Trent, though she couldn’t wholesale admire him. It was stupid and the guns had stopped. There was something in the uncanny odd quiet of it, the streets quiet, no (however distant) rumble, no whistles nor rumbles, things you don’t think, in London, you are hearing but which (in London) you miss when they stop. As if a heart stopped simply. “Somethings stopped.” “It’s the guns.” “Yes. It must be.” Darrington was pulling the other couch out from behind the screen that shut their enormous room into sections. The other big couch would do for two of them. Which two? What was this? What was her mind doing? People thought like that those days. Thoughts came from outside like swallows suddenly appearing, wheeling, appearing, wheeling, turning. Spring and the swallows of her freedom. Birds. “O Merry. Yes do stay.” Darrington was already beginning to remove bits of himself, a belt, bits of things, a belt. The leather belt lay where he flung it among the ring of glasses. Ring. A ring. Ring around a rosy. A ring. A ring. A ring. Brides of God. What kind of a bride? Of God. What kind of a God? O yes, pretend. Don’t think. You are so tired, take Merry into your bed. They can arrange it after you have gone to sleep. Swallows were dipping and wheeling and this world was not real and she had left her husband on the rocks at Capri. . swallows had reeled and Odysseus had turned that corner for the Syren voices. . voices. . voices. . almost (not quite) Hermione could hear voices for the food wasn’t worth eating when you got it and “O do stay Merry. O of course, it’s too late. You can’t go home now and you can’t sleep in the kitchen. There’s an extra munition worker in the little old room we used to have at the back. Stay here.” “How wonderful. How beautiful.” Darrington went on undressing. “O yes. If you want one.” Merry didn’t want a night dress. She pulled off the mauve and old gold and she was gold and mauve underneath. “I don’t take up much room.” “I don’t take up much room either and the couch is wide. Are you all right Jerrold?” Jerrold out of delicacy seemed to have removed bits only, rolled in his great coat. He was simply “rolling in” as people did nowadays. People didn’t sleep, pulled off bits of things and Hermione pulled off bits of things. Darrington seemed to be asleep. “Who’ll blow out the last candle? But it must be almost day. Goodnight.”
As in a dream she could hear them the other side of the room, but why wake? Mary was a slut, a little fox-coloured wench out of some restoration comedy. Hermione had always known Merry was like that. Or wasn’t she? Delia had asked Merry to see her, Merry then being wistful (when wasn’t she?) and saying, “poor Mary Dalton wants friends, new life, that terrible contretemps with” (whoever it at the moment was) “and all her frail spirituality threatened.” American women were like that, so good that they couldn’t, wouldn’t see. Delia was like that and Hermione was half like that but she wasn’t going to let her sterilized New English-ness do her out of the show. It was, all told, a damn good show. A very good damn show. Sleep with her arm above her head and listen if she wants to for what she hears is nothing, a sort of sweep of swallow wings, the swallows of her redemption, the swallows of her freedom. Of course if Darrington (she called him Darrington so often in her thoughts) knows I’m awake it will be a little awkward. Swallows sweeping, sweeping but what god had sent her this, this clue of her redemption? It was better than being dead. Death was a freeing but this was better, this death in life, this ghost in life, this life in death. O Delia, delicious Delia you have only a half-knowledge, this is the true knowledge, the white-half of my knowledge reaches up, up to the sun of its attainment and my roots rooted fast here, here in the present, here in this mire. My husband wasn’t like yours (or like pre-war Captain Trent) an officer and a gentleman but I’m glad for that for if he had been he would have gone off at once and my life would have been so clearly on the rails, a poor unhappy and good woman. I’m now none of those things. I had that child. . no. I will talk of it. You Delia never had a sign of one. O delicious and beautiful sterile lovely goddess, beautiful in your goodness as I might have been if God hadn’t given me this mystic knowledge that I’m already O so comfortably out of it, dead simply like the boy who looked at the books, whom I couldn’t, didn’t dare to comfort. Florient. Perhaps she’d do next. People, faces, people, ghosts. They’re lying in the mud in France, in Flanders and I’m in a warm bed. Warm bed. I know you all. I feel the wind over your faces and I know the mud about your feet and Jeanne d’Arc was the same, white lilies, white lilies are growing from the trenches, there are lines and lines of lilies across France. Lilies are flowering across France and some few (some very few) in London. We see our death. We take it. We find our grave, O trench wide grave, O bed here narrow enough grave and this other whose smile was for a moment almost the jasmine-white of the redeemed, changed and crept from her bed, crept from her redemption, crept from her fate. Could thou not watch with me one night? Or was it one hour? Anyhow, anyway it worked either way for they had only just “got” poor Trent. Who was he anyhow with his own fiery and self-chosen crown. Trent’s crown dripped red roses, bombs, the English. All wrong but it wasn’t the deed it was the motive and his roses were red roses dropping, dripping over her, over her. He had sent Merry back to Hermione saying Hermione would be kind, “I like that woman.” He said he liked her, a woman, he said he liked her, told her she was beautiful, not with the charm of Merry but staring at her and now they had him. A tight place in London. There
5
One didn’t marry. One did stunts. That was it. That was right. For what had her marriage been, all told? Certainly not a marriage. Racing about Italy and being called Signora, nobody ever thought she was married anyway. Some people were like that. Never got the credit for anything. Anyway Mrs. Darrington and a pension. But he wouldn’t die now. He wouldn’t die now. They didn’t die when they were cast by the roadside. Darrington was dead now. He wouldn’t die. There was no white flower any more to be hoped for but what was this? What was this? “Darling. You’ve slept late.” Someone was kissing her, brushing her face like a nosing puppy. Who was that? Late and far there had been sounds of flutes, olives and olive silver Sirmio so this was somewhere else and someone else but it couldn’t be anywhere else. It was Italy.
“My dear, you never brought me any hurt. What ever?” He found a cigarette now, lighted it. Her little hour was perfection upon perfection. The waves of clean smoke came over and across her knees drawn up a little and Jerrold found her feet, two long feet which he caught like a hunter in his wide palm. Her feet beneath the clothes were held, caught and his hand was strong, Saxon, strong, a strong hand beautifully modelled, beautiful like his own feet, those statue feet that had pressed so clear and flat and right with the arch curve on the dark trodden paths that wound through olive and along the rock-edged cytisus bushes of the hills above Solaro. Feet, hands. What was more gracious than this? Had she no heart? No conscience? “I’m afraid I’m rather odd. I didn’t mind — Merry—” Jerrold did not turn. Was he used to this sort of thing? Had it happened before? Had Merry been “near” him before? It didn’t matter? Did it matter? If she could drop her head across the bed clothes and cry it would be all right. She couldn’t. She saw that Jerrold Darrington was clear and right and shaved and clean and in the right clothes and his new routine had thinned him again and his cuff was elegant. The cuff that rested across her knees with the new “grip,” the hand under it. He was right. Was she then wrong? “My clothes were so shabby and worthless—” He wasn’t listening. Was he thinking of someone else, something else? But did it matter? Did she care really? “I suppose I am a sort of Undine, George used to say so.” “What did you say, darling?” “I said I suppose I must be rather terrible.” “You are, dear.” “Terrible. Terrible. How am I?” But he was wandering now about the room, finding bits of things. He said, “you’ll be ready. We must clear off now in twenty minutes”. . and she wanted to answer something, couldn’t say it, had no words to say it but if she could wait here with her chin on her drawn up knees, remembering the feel of his wide palm about her feet, she would manage to find voice, to speak, to give him that word, that message, that signal before it was too late. She mustn’t lose all the things that had made her one with classic beauty, Italy, Solaro, the lizards on the sunbaked steps of the House of the Faun and the avenue of cypresses of the road of the dead at Pompeii.
“There are no fields of asphodel this side of the grave.” “Damn, you might have thought of something cheerful.” “O but I am. I do. I only said it as a joke.” “Joke. You all take this bloody war as a midnight revel.” “We — all?” “Yes. The whole damn lot of you. London gets more randy every time I hit here.” “Is it that—” But why ask it, why say it? Why say, isn’t it you that’s randy? Death ringed their nostrils and there was no taxi and they almost ran the length of King’s Road, making for Euston, not like other leaves, the taxi, the rumble and luxury of it and the smoke in her throat and her eyes stinging with fog and feeling that she was ugly, hopeless and her hat jammed down over her eyes and how odd to look really pretty (would she ever?) again. Trains rumbling. Trains. Rumbling. Smoke to be breathed in layers, breathed in and out, like cotton wadging. Cold. O it was cold that winter. Cold. Winter. There are no fields. . cyclamen was lying and broken horns of cyclamen in that smoke and rumble gave an added fragrance. Trampled flowers smell sweet. Was this the end? Was this the end? Hysteria but suppressed. Hysteria suppressed goes to the head like wine and you make pictures, patterns and she was quiet and she felt her eyes clear and staring. If she could now cry? Was this the last? Broken cyclamen, the sweeter for the crushing. “Don’t you know — I love you?” Faces, people, men, officers, red tape, men, men, men, dragging bundles, dragging packs, hat tilted, swank, officers. Trains. Smoke. A lover. A lover. No one would ever think it was a husband. “Over the top.” Why must he say that, standing in the window? She wasn’t a soldier. Over the top. . going, going, going, going. . Jerrold.
6
Hysteria suppressed goes to the head like wine, but all the same this was more than she bargained for, for the thing about her wrist was real, she knew the corner of the street, the name of the street, the name of the other rectangular street and she knew where she was but a gold circlet had clasped her wrist, just one gold circle, just the circle of fingers, not hurting, just catching her wrist as she lifted her hand to straighten her hat, for she thought out of the fog someone looming toward her looked familiar, but it wasn’t. . anyone she knew. All the same this was a very clear thing, not anything she had made up. It might be that I’m hungry. We are all hungry. Is God hungry? Did God being hungry have hallucinations like they had or was this something different, quite other, out of another world? For it was outside herself. . what happened.
Hermione turned the corner (on the way home from Euston) in the fog and noted the names of streets and thought, yes I promised Mrs. Lechstein that I’d stop in for she was worried and asked me if I thought we could manage to put some of Lechstein’s things down in our cellar. They always seemed to hit near us, near her, but we were safer as we were the other side of the great square where the little plaster Flora had spilled her plaster flowers and that is why they had come here. She and Jerrold had come because the plaster Flora was like the real Flora (but was it a robed Ganymede?) but you know the one in the Signora’s garden at Amalfi. The one that spilled things, fruits or flowers, girl or boy, and the oranges had dropped petals and star-blossoms and the scent was paradise. So every time you (or she) saw the plaster Flora, blossoms spilled, they did really but in imagination like the carpet that had spread (this early morning) under her bare feet, the feet Darrington had for a moment caught in his hunter’s palm and she hadn’t found the words for Darrington. A message, a signal that should have flared, didn’t flare and it was over the top. . over the top. . was she over the top? For this thing was real and she looked at her wrist pulling back the sleeve that had slipped back into place. As the wide sleeve had fallen from her uplifted arm (as she lifted her arm to straighten her hat, thinking it was someone looming out of the fog, but it wasn’t) a space had been left free, free against the chafe and rub of thick sulphur fog and that naked space of meagre wrist had been caught for a moment but it wasn’t imagination. Someone, something had caught her wrist at the corner of Guildford Street and Old Queen’s Square, that old street, for the Lechsteins lived two houses below and she was remembering that Milly Lechstein, now that Isaac was gone, wanted to keep the statues safe, treated them all like so many babies. Milly Lechstein loved the statues. Isaac was gone. Jews loving beauty. No country. Like Hermione no country. But she had a country. She had a husband. This thing out of the fog that placed a bracelet about her meagre wrist. . my husband. . the gods, you see, were alive. The mist was full of shapes and odd looming creatures and you never knew in the darkness (day dark or night dark) what might or mightn’t loom up at you. This place was blanketed down and it was wrong about their treating the war like a mid-night revel. It was wrong and it was the other way round, the war was treating them like dolls and puppets and painted dolls and she had painted her cheeks but had managed to smudge it off afterwards and she was glad it smudged off for out of the mist someone had caught at her, caught at her. She was no Penelope. Cassandra maybe. She had known he was there. But he had never taken form before, never taken her wrist, caught it, made a circle of fire about it, so that even now with her arm hanging naturally, under her coat, she could feel, feel. . did it mean Darrington wouldn’t come back? What did it mean?
He looked at her in a curious quizzical way and she had seen him before but where had she seen him? He loomed at her across the room, out of the room among the statues, someone not in khaki, not in horizon blue, coming simply toward her, had he been there all the time? She didn’t seem to notice things. “Have you been here all the time?” He smiled at her. Where had she seen him? He was a stranger but she had seen him. Was it at her own house at one of those ribald parties? She couldn’t remember, facing him, while Milly bustled with some trouble below stairs and bells ringing and he was looking at her. Things had happened, were happening, were going to happen but he was like a mist of gold dust, flower dust in that meagre room furnished with nothing but Lechstein’s statues and the few low stools, the low stool she was seated on and another or so and nothing in the beautifully proportioned room, big room full of statues and the day and the night merged here, was it morning or afternoon? He was speaking to her and she had seen him before and certainly at one of her own parties and he was asking her to come out to lunch as he believed Milly would forget them, wouldn’t remember them, she was always in trouble, it would be someone to collect a bill and he had only come on business. He was asking her to go out to lunch with him and as Milly came back, he said he believed it would be all right and he was paying Milly, it appeared, for the statue, someone’s bust, some friend of his, a commission from long ago, but he had been away and would she see that the thing went straight to Cornwall? He was paying in a lordly manner for a statue and one did pay for Lechstein’s statues sometimes, it seems, and he went on talking and how had he got there? Had he been there all the time? “Isaac wants to do your head,” and Hermione smiled at Milly but she couldn’t imagine what a head of hers would look like now, now that she was gone. . over the top. Had she a head? Milly was appealing to the other person, “wouldn’t it be interesting,” and he was assenting of course, he was politely assenting. “I must take Mrs. Darrington out to lunch. Promised I’d not be late,” as if it was arranged but she had not come here to meet this person, what was his name, Vane, now she remembered, wealthy, heart trouble, dabbled in the arts, helped Lechstein. She had met him here at Lechstein’s and she had had him among others at her house, their house, over the top. . Vane. Cyril Vane. Wealthy. How marvellous to be wealthy. “Yes. I promised Mr. Vane.” What had she promised? Milly was tactful, thought they had arranged to meet, had they arranged to meet? Why had she turned into Milly Lechstein’s this morning, why had that swerve made her mount the steps and the gold bracelet, all in a dream and now she was seated in a restaurant, where was it? Late in the afternoon, over coffee, coffee, good coffee. Her clothes were shabby but there was something Victorian and “genteel” about it for the right kind of woman looked shabby now and Vane with his distinction and his pallor might have been an officer, a wounded officer on leave. Everyone rushed about, made a fuss, how were they to know it was only heart-trouble and he had never been in it? How were they to know that his words came right with no merging and blurring of filth, no “Fritz,” no “that’s the stuff to give ’em.” People didn’t talk that way, not officers and gentlemen, only Darrington, but after all, he was her husband and she was no Penelope. “Quaint of old Milly to call you that.” “Me? What.” “Shouldn’t have thought she could have so far penetrated—” “Me?” “Didn’t she? Or did I dream it. Morgan le Fay.”
7
Then staring in the mirror she saw herself, saw herself, yes, she was somehow dehumanised and he was seeing it and Milly Lechstein had seen it, saying in that funny way, “you look like Morgan le Fay, Mrs. Darrington.” Milly called her Mrs. Darrington. What did Cyril Vane call her? O obviously Mrs. Darrington. He would call her Mrs. Darrington. Who was Mrs. Darrington? Mrs. Darrington was a bit of earth and someone, someone else had stepped out of Mrs. Darrington. Mrs. Darrington was a trench, wide and deep and someone else had stepped out and was out and wasn’t Mrs. Darrington. Across a room that swam in a delicious haze, a haze that was made of gold on pale gold, the wine gold, the odd straw-gold of the head opposite, sleek head bent forward, head undimmed by powder, by explosive, by gas, by green and green and red flares falling across wastes of barbed wire and dead Fritzes, head bent forward, some god had set a head there in a restaurant (imagine it but I know you can’t quite realize it) in that odd 18, 18, 18. Do you know what I mean? In 1918 there was one head, gold head, a tall stalk held up a gold head though the head dropped forward with odd pre-chasm affectation, a head on a frail long stalk, like some great yellow pear but heavy on its tall, very tall stalk. A head that was gold that caught glint of gold from the light reflected down from the rose-lamp and the wine had been gold and now gold from within and gold from without made a sort of halo, a sort of aura of light as if they were on a stage (all the world’s a stage) and the spot light had them, the spot light in all that dreary waste of London held them and so held, so caught, Hermione must dutifully consider, look, see what it was that was held, consider what it was, lift her glass to it, far and far and this was something pre-chasm, wine didn’t any more do things to you. But this did. This was pre-chasm, something different, they thought he was wounded, an officer, wounded and they had brought out this — pre-chasm. You tasted grape and grape and gold grape (can you imagine it?) and gold on gold and gold filled your palate, pushed against your mouth, pushed down your throat, filled you with some divine web, a spider, gold web and you wove with it, wove with it, wove with the web inside you, wove outward images and saw yourself opposite smiling with eyes uptilted, smiling at something that had crept out of Mrs. Darrington, small, not very good, looking at you in a glass, tall, very tall, not very good, divine like a great lily. Someone, something was looking at something and someone, something was smiling at someone. Wine went to your brain and you knew there was no division now and there was someone, one left, just one left like yourself who was dead and not dead who was alone and not alone. We know each other when we see each other, people like us. We were two angels with no wings to speak of, with the angelic quality that comes, that goes, that will come, that will go. His was youth and his own thwarted health, making him look gold on gold with that odd pallor that made gold on gold ray out almost visibly from his forehead. He was wealthy and his clothes were pre-chasm and it was obvious to anyone looking at them that everything was all right for he was a gentleman, therefore he must be an officer, therefore she must be — but why go on and on and on and on with this thing? Cigarettes made her one with every beauty she had forgotten, days and days and nights. He was talking of Rome, he loved the Spanish steps, he had always wanted a little room, two rooms, something small and something (as he put it) 1860ish. She could see the 1860 candelabra, the light and glisten of it, the many facets of the candelabra and the old arm-chair and the tall blue blue vases on the over-ornate mantel. And then all redeemed by elegance and marble of that regal period and then the almond blossom from the campagna (in February) would bank up against that mirror, that other mirror where she could almost see herself looking, smiling. . candles.
Go back further and you saw him, Etruscan with his thin face. His face was thin and his shoulders that broad thinness that you see in Egypt. Egypt, a honey-lotus looked at her and already she had forgotten the dead body, the Mrs. Darrington she had left long ago, on a bed, on a wide grave. Someone had stepped out and put a foot upon a carpet and someone had broken cyclamen horns and cyclamen fragrance had assailed the nostrils and cyclamen had dripped across roofs, across station platforms, the frail incense of it had wavered and men, men, men, men had lifted heads, sniffed this rare thing; men, officers had lifted heads but that was the other side, the other side of the river, of the Styx, where they all were, all drift of ghosts and she was this side, had simply by her own acumen, discovered this side and the odd thing was there was someone this side with her. Of course, she was a little drunk, wine went to your head for the food was good enough of its kind, but food wasn’t food, it was odd things, fricassee that didn’t taste of anything but the coffee was black, black. The cigarette was the incense and the wine was the wine and the body opposite her the sacrifice. She could eat that body, devour it, it was gold, it was honey-comb and the wine was good and she was quite happy, had never been so happy. A wreath crowned her head, violets and he was talking, talking, saying nothing, talking the way people, charming people, used to do, about Rome, about books, saying things that Darrington had forgotten, saying things. .
He would go on saying things. He was a lump of amber and Hermione had only to look and look or to rub her palm across that smooth surface and electric sparks would answer her, warm her, light her. God sends things to people. He had caught her wrist. Was this God? or messenger of God? Was this some manifestation of the force that caught her wrist (with Darrington gone). . it was Cyril Vane. Hermione had seen him before. Had not seen him before. He had been one of a little group, had come, had gone, seen him somewhere else as they did, drifting in and out. Gold. Like a great pear. “Has Darrington gone back yet?” She would tell him Darrington had gone back and then he wouldn’t come to see her. But she would tell him, “Yes, he’s gone back.” Vane would pay the bill, Vane would wait for her to reach, scrubbling about for bag, for gloves, Vane would say good-bye somewhere, somehow, not coming to see her for he wouldn’t as Darrington was in France. She didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to see him. She wanted to wait, to wait, to watch and to reveal herself to herself watching herself. She would go home, wash the tumblers, get down books. “Thank you for taking me out this afternoon. It’s been the greatest pleasure.”
But it had been a moment, a dream, a yellow lotus of forgetfulness and it couldn’t hold on into the room, into the smoke, into the lack of coal and now into another leave. . another leave. . how they came back, how they came around and the sort of half-state, the sort of Limbo that she was in, that she managed to maintain, not seeing people, reading, sewing a little, had to be broken. . another leave. . and she was caught back into her body, caught back into the body of Mrs. Darrington, the person she was, it appeared, still, caught back, held into it, like a bird caught in a trap, like a bird caught in bird-lime, caught and held in it, all the time remembering her Limbo, the state she maintained through weeks, going on and on, not at Delia’s any more, but digging out her books, determined to remember, like the Centurion, to stand guard over Beauty, one soldier over Beauty, while the lava fell and fell and the ashes rose higher to suffocate. Darrington said, “well, why did you?” and she didn’t know the answer to that for she had said, “go ahead” and that meant only one thing for Darrington. How was she to know after it happened, after it kept on happening (Florient had the big room on the second landing for the county dame in the Air Ministry had had to leave London) that she would so care? Did she care? It was worse than caring. It was like having a body and being dead, mercifully, and then someone coming and saying no, you aren’t dead, you are only half-dead, crawl back to your body. Conscientiously she had crawled back to her body, after she had winged out, gold, gold gauze of wings, winging up and up against a rose shaded light (she remembered) and now back in her body (not even comfortable Limbo) and she had been so happy. “I never thought—” “You never thought. Well you might have thought—” He was right. She was wrong. She had not thought in her pride, in her habitations, in her frank terror of this newest of the new Darringtons that they would (as one used to say) “carry on” to that extent, but why shouldn’t they? Did people in the house know? That was what wracked her, people in munitions, all the people, good people, though she had repudiated good people, repudiated Delia and the Red Cross work and the munitions, still you had to think, had to remember, but Darrington was an officer, so everything was excused him if he wasn’t a gentleman and it went on and it went on. “You’re upstairs so much of the time—” “What did you expect when you so sweetly gave us carte blanche?” “I don’t in the least know what I did expect—” “I should think you didn’t. It’s obvious that you only wanted to get me out of the way—” “Out of the
Now he said, “is it true Vane wants you to go off to Cornwall with him?” It was another day and she was so happy spreading her fingers to the unaccustomed luxury of the fire that she didn’t think, couldn’t think and Darrington, Jerrold, had brought her winter daffodils. “He never came here while you were away. Only lately.” “Lately?” Darrington was different, he was looking at her, eyes wide and staring, not the mad badness of him but wide and somehow lost, lost in the room, looking around the room, their room, that he hardly ever came to now, asking her about Vane. “What — does — he — want?” “He doesn’t want anything. He’s just sorry—” “Sorry? You told him?” “No. Things get about. You can’t expect them not to. He asked me if I — liked you.” “And you told him?” “I said I had liked you, loved you. That you were different.” “And he said?” “He said, you’d better wait till the war’s over and give the lieutenant a fresh chance.’” “Why did he say that?” “I don’t know. He doesn’t really like me. He wants to— save me.” “Damn right—” “Right?” “To save you. You’d best hop it. Clear out. You can’t stay here another flu epidemic. You’re most all in now.” “Yes. We — all — are.” “Astraea—”
Trampled flowers smell sweet. “Do you remember the spray of violets that were growing, by just that miracle at the base of the broken white marble foot, that hadn’t been dug out yet, leaves brushed away, a foot that had been there, had been standing. So Beauty is still standing, a broken foot—” “You are obsessed with these things, sister of Charmides.” “Charmides? I don’t remember.” “Surely you do, Astraea. That poem of Wilde. He loved statues.” “Yes, Charmides. Statues—” “You never loved, cared. We were never married.” “Married? But Naples?” “The wind from the Bay was as married, more, than I to you, Astraea. The rock cytisus was more your lover, not as people love.” “Was that my fault?” “Fault? Your misfortune I sometimes think, seeing others, knowing the red wine of ecstacy that you’ve missed.” “Missed? Have I missed anything? I smell the locust blossoms that fell along the quay, the smell of salt weed and the honey locust blossom and the atrocious guitars with Verdi, their Bella Lucia which weren’t atrocious. Things are what they are in proportion to their setting. Love is what it is in relation to its surroundings. I loved you, loved the wrong sound of guitars that weren’t wrong. Things change and love is not to be measured even with an angel’s rod. You are wrong. I loved more than all these people.” “I tell you, frankly, (we were always frank) you do not.” “Do they know that ecstacy of the senses when a phosphorescent eel or some globe shaped sea-monster turns and makes a cone of light in the shadowy tank of the aquarium? There are senses and sets of sense vibration that they don’t know. I felt with senses that you don’t know—” “Don’t argue. You can’t argue of Love. You don’t know about love—” Let him go on. Broken cyclamen, trampled flowers are sweeter. He loved her very much and his self had opened to let self out. His other self, or sleeping self opened before her eyes. It was hidden like the fleck of colour in the tulip bulb, that fleck of colour that was his life, his soul. It opened before her eyes but it couldn’t go on opening. They were severed, had been severed. It is to their credit that they recognized that severance, saw it, stood up to it, dared it, challenged it. “You won’t forget—” “Forget?” What was forget. Things are part of you as the threads of a deep sea creature, its threads of feelers are itself. Butterfly antennae are the butterfly body, more subtly, more intrinsically than the soft moth-belly of it. It was her misfortune (sometimes her questionable strength) that she felt outwardly with her aura as it were of vibrant feelers rather than with the soft moth-belly of her body. She felt knowing her limitations, more than they felt. Knowing her limitations, she realised that the tender feelers of her being were in danger. Butterfly antennae to be withered like the soft forward feeling of a moth’s breath. Breath of a moth, of some soul. . “Does he really want you?”
“I tell you yes. At least he doesn’t want to go alone there.” “If I go west, then he’ll marry you, look after you.” “O no. I don’t want that. I don’t think so far. If you come back I come back. You will be different after it’s over. This is no test of courage. I’m sorry I couldn’t have done more, helped further.” “There is no help, there was none. Louise knows my needs. I love her. You don’t know what I mean by that. I love her, she adores me.” “Obviously. Do you want to marry then?” “God help me — no. Not Louise. . wait for me.”
8
So she waited. She was in two parts. Part of her had got out, was out, was herself, the gold gauze, the untrampled winged thing, the spirit, if you will or if you will the mere careless nymph, the careless lover, the faithless wife. The faithless wife had wings of gauze and now she knew better what love was for Cyril Vane was tall and gentle and not heavy and not domineering like her husband. Husband, lover. . the 1860 thrill. I don’t yet quite know how I did it, it was partly that he helped me, seeing that it was all lop-sided, it was brotherly of him, rather dear of him at the last bursting into my room after he had said good-bye saying he would — come — back. She had come away out of the ruin of London, escaping raids, escaping cold and colds and the horror that was around them. She had poise here, power. She was re-established. It was Vane who was her husband, more her husband, thoughtful, always right. She had reticences with Vane. . a “nice” woman, over-romantic, tenuous, poetical and this was her right husband. Vane was right and Darrington never had been and that was why looking back, looking back across the weeks, across the few lovely months that she felt tremours, sadness, wistful longings for that other who was so very far from perfect. “What, another letter?” The letters came now more and more frequently from France. Letters from Darrington from France. Letters, it was right to have letters. Whose were the letters? Postman seeing letters, all the letters, it was right that she should have letters. Hermione hid the letters from her husband as if they were from a lover — it was so mixed, lover, husband. She should have obviously married someone like Cyril Vane, great house, everything clear and clean and beautiful, walls lined with books, her own room and everything right, the house-keeper dignified, everything right. People like Vane didn’t have to explain things. It was people like Darrington that had to bluster a little, say “the gov’nor you know, four quarterings, but all faked.” Faked or not faked you did not hear of Vane’s people, nor his quarterings. People, faces. She was right here, face looking at you is right face for you Hermione. Your face now belongs to you, skin with a hint of burnt-honey brown, hair drawn back and fastened with broad band. Face looks at you and your hands though thin are firm and strong and fasten the velvet band and your frock is smooth and your hands are clean and your sewing bag is right and you don’t care too much now about reading. You lie in the sun and your face nozzles down into tiny bell-flower, tiny white bells of heather, so sweet a smell rising up, rising up from the edge of the cliff and below you, there are further shelves clotted now with primroses, thick with clotted blossom. Shelves flow like veins of lapis and those lapis veins are simply hyacinth but seen from up here they make just such a deep blue line like a crack of lapis in a shelf of emerald. Was there ever such green? Flowers that are (it must be) rose-campion, little flowers along the edge of a field; the fields are small, small, simply imagination come true. This is reality. Heady gorse, thick with its yellow makes ridges and lumps of pure gold and I must be somewhere else. I haven’t died for I am substantiated, there is no breaking out of myself, I am myself. I can walk, run, lie on the grass for there is never anyone about here and it’s odd the place being haunted and Vane getting it cheap and a bore Fletcher, the house-keeper keeps saying she hears noises. She’ll leave, that’s the next thing and I hate cooking and we are so far from anywhere and no one has been here since the — war. What is the war? There is a thing you mean when you say “since” and “the.” What is the war? People, faces that don’t matter. That is the war. The war is people and faces that don’t matter. The war is Louise with her Sienna slant of eyes and the carnation embroidered Chinese shawl and her standing and looking and looking and standing. . the war is some boy who was swept out in the column for the whole column was swept out and they said it that way as if the whole column being swept out was the reason for his being swept out and that that explained it. They didn’t seem to understand death, didn’t know it when it faced them, was this bravado, or sheer stupidity? But I can’t cope with England. I can’t cope with all this. Cornwall is Phoenician and that boats tipped their sails toward this very rock and certainly if I went high on the earn at night, I should see things, images, ghosts. Funny old Mrs. Fletcher the housekeeper hearing things, says she can’t stand it much longer. Loneliness. She must be. . lonely. What is loneliness? Loneliness is a room full of people and Louise in a carnation embroidered shawl and the crowd going round and round and round and having to keep one’s head up. Loneliness is a crowded room and the guns making a row and people, people, people. . a gull wings up and wings around and screeches at me. His nest must be near here. I’ll find it.
Gulls crawl into my arms but I’m not alive. It’s rather odd suddenly being dead, being out of it and the others alive, somewhere, no, dead somewhere and I alone alive. Loneliness of Eve in paradise. That is my loneliness. Gulls crawl into my arms for I am too happy to cry but if I could cry it seems to me I would be happier. I don’t care about anything, about anybody. This place seems to have been made for me but what is wrong? Paradise won too soon, beauty in its perfection come too soon. I hate myself for not caring any more about the lilies that grow with each minute across the length and breadth of France. Each minute that the clock ticks, each minute that my heart beats, some boy is flinging away a flower, a white flower, one alone on top of a hill, one alone in a ditch, but one can’t go on remembering these things. I forgot them long ago and I for-got them for if I had gone on thinking, remembering (Americans don’t care, don’t understand) I should have gone mad simply. I felt it coming up, rising up against my skull. I felt a lily-bud push up against my skull, it wasn’t imagination, it was reality, (like the bracelet that day, going to Milly Lechstein’s) something I
“Jerrold, I must tell you at once. Let me know how you feel about it. .” But before she could hear from Jerrold there was some oracle to be placated. She would find what the oracle said and she would follow the oracle whatever Jerrold said. She would ask Jerrold first, tell Vane afterwards, consult the oracle in between times but whatever the oracle said, must go. Oracle, there are thousands of you. Antiquity lives here. Witchcraft. . but I won’t try anything like that though I could try it. . I know I have knowledge. It’s come here to me, the knowledge that I have knowledge. I must make some demand, find out something for things like this don’t happen (only in war-time) and Cyril said he would be careful, would be careful. . careful. They always say that, Darrington said that. Vane said that. “Careful.” What is care? Cassandra. Am I then Cassandra? What has Vane to do with it, long body, slim and cool and different. . what has he to do with it, always thoughtful, never domineering? He has had nothing to do with it for he says always he has been careful but what is careful? There is God in one and God out of one and now that God is in me. I feel no difference between in and out. Something had happened to me, whatever the oracle may say, I know already something has happened to me. But I’ll ask it, for inside and outside are the same, God in and out, all gold, gorse, pollen-dust, gold and gold of rayed light slanting across the low spikes of white orchid and fragrance in and out, the same wind that blows across waters blew sails here from Phoenicia and perhaps I was a gypsy, Egyptian, having children as priests, priests having children with priestesses. This is no ordinary thing, war-time, things happen and the white bull shook and lowered at me but I must have the answer. Gull in my arms fill my arms. Sacrifice and sacrifice and now they will hate me, the birds will hate me, not all the birds. Go away sea-bird, I must find a land-bird and now in my room, I’ll wait and ask. .
Layers of life are going on all the time only sometimes we know it and most times we don’t know it. Layers and layers of life like some transparent onion-like globe that has fine, transparent layer on layer (interpenetrating like water) layer on layer, circle on circle. Plato’s spheres. Sometimes for a moment we realize a layer out of ourselves, in another sphere of consciousness, sometimes one layer falls and life itself, the very reality of tables and chairs becomes imbued with a quality of long-past, an epic quality so that the chair you sit in may be the very chair you drew forward when as Cambyses you consulted over the execution of your faithless servitors. Cruelty and beauty and love of beauty is the common heritage of the whole race. Everything is to each but it is only in developing ones own genius, one’s own mean personality (which is one’s innate daemon) that we can reach the realization of some sphere which is for all time, eternal, flowing as water, colourless, transparent which falling imbues the very common chair you sit in the very ordinary book you lift and open with some quality that is one with the Revelation of Saint John the Divine or the orders of Sappho. Colour there is in this sphere world, colour of the red anemone, colour as seen under clear water, colour as sea-coral seen through crystal. World falls over your head and you are embedded in the world; you are its only imperfection, a fly in its clear amber; you are its only imperfection yet your very presence giving quality, point, perspective to this otherwise so measureless luminous body. Fly in amber, Hermione stood in her room, a very fly enclosed in clear substance and she asked of swallows wheeling and swirling before the small open window if she should have it. Her heart ticked, dared not tick, knew the moment she had made the poignant demand of something outside (you may call it God or Plato’s circles) that it would answer, that its answer would be infallible. The door was shut. The window was open. The window faced east, faced the semi-circle of terraced stones that was the Druidical, that was the almost classic amphitheatre that the opposite earn made for the receiving of the sun’s first rays, for the receiving of the dew of the sky, for the receiving of the round globe of the moon that floated above it, would fall and embrace the very curve of the hillside like Artemis the thigh of tall sleeping young Endymion. Classic images here blend with Druidical surroundings, the round stones placed in their circle of seven, the very obvious flat altar stones higher on the earn and the enormous great ivy-trees, rounder than a huge, huge arm, trees of stock of ivy like a body, were the body (obviously) of some God. Dionysus. Druid priests. Ivy. The crown of the sacrificed. Things in the air, several layers of mysteries and all the time the knowledge that England was a cloud and she was looking down at England and at the war and at all the poor dark cloud of people from a height, so high, so clear an atmosphere that breathing it, she felt her very lungs gross and porous, great porous gross wings, beating inside her hulk of bone and frame of white bone covered with parchment flesh. Her body was like some mummified thing come to life and the breath in her lungs was pure spirit, the breath was part of the outer circle, the circle that had fallen, that had fallen some days ago (what was it, two days, three, must count exactly) when even the remote possibilities. . how did one think of these things? The whole pain and worry had been eliminated. Her body was like some coffin merely, a thing of bone and fibre, a cocoon for the enfolding of a spirit.
Body now with clean hands, having lain all day on the rocks, having floated across the aquamarine surface of the tide pool, the one you own, your own pool that Vane even, had not gone to, body that has been cleansed in sun, in sea are you ready for its welcoming? Hermione asked this, waiting, knew that the answer was already premeditated. That God had prepared the answer as he had prepared the question in her own mind. God was the answer and the question. God was the lover and the beloved. God was the union of God with God. “If a swallow flies straight in, now without any hesitation, just in here to me, I’ll have it.”
Classic images here blend with images of Christian beauty. Hermione bent to scrape up the little blue object from the floor. The thing was round and blue and hard, it appeared like any lapis-blue small song-bird clasped in the hand of some Florentine bambino. All images blend here as she bent for it; she bent and took the creature into her hands, into her heart, she was bending, accepting the inviolability of God’s Testament. Why should God ask this? She didn’t know. She knew in the dark sub-consciousness an abyss of unimaginable terror, the pain, the disappointment, the utter horror of the last thing. Swimming on the surface of her mind was something other, different, of some other category than sheer crass experience. Experience had nothing to do with this thing, nor logic nor love even. It wasn’t because of Cyril Vane that she stooped and swept the hard small blue thing from the floor, sweeping it up, its little crab claws sticking like insect claws to a dark leaf. She picked the little creature off the floor and images blend here, Undine, Morgan le Fay, some Florentine Madonna, some nymph whose beauty had been violated on some Delphic shelf. She was good and bad and remote and impossible. You don’t go off to Cornwall in war-time and have babies. You see the manifest impossibility of the thing? Another thing. . but she would not think of that. Something would happen, must happen, for God so simply had admonished her. God had swept one of his birds inward with a touch of his finger, one of his souls inward. . “all rather awkward of course, but I’ll hear from Jerrold.” Awkward. She hadn’t any more to speak, to feel. She had forgotten Vane.
But she must remember Vane. After all, it was his child, if it
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Painted case that had been so hieratically perfect for its receiving became (like the very larva of the future butterfly) now a jelly of vague unrest, of vague forebodings. Painted case so lovely and so calm and so inviolate if only you could stay a painted case, if only all the artificial glamour and hieratic spiritual fervour could be maintained. Did Madonna hold her own against this glue in nothingness, this inchoate mass that you become once you take — full hands for taking? She slept alone, was alone, had been. Jerrold wrote, “do everything to keep well. I want you to keep well. All I want is to look after you. All I want is to look after it.” But what did that matter? It was fore-ordained that Jerrold should so write. Who was Jerrold? At best some secondary Joseph, at worst some oaf of erotic maniac who had bartered his wife, who had so sold his honour. What was Vane? At best some tall half-sexed Gabriel or Michael, some angel of annunciation, some spirit who had appeared and made what was ordained, what was to be, reality. O Angel of Annunciation, “then you will — help — me — with — it?” She asked the question standing before him, already the weight of her own undertaking heavy on her, the weariness of her own pilgrimage seeming to stretch out and out before her. There was her own little money, the little sum that had seemed so smug and secure but that the war and Jerrold away and Jerrold and his leave-extravagances made now almost nothing, a drop, enough to keep from starving, not enough to go into a proper nursing-home — what did the Virgin Mary do on this occasion? O ask the arch-angel Michael obviously for God having ordained this would not leave one of his prostitutes no, one of his concubines (a wise virgin anyway) empty, forsaken. It was quite evident that God wouldn’t but on the other hand was it God or some mage of wickedness for she didn’t any more think (had she ever thought?) that Vane might be its father. Morgan le Fay you must summon your magic, become mere scheming wizard, witch for you must be assured that this, this thing that is God’s, this thing that is the child of some sun-daemon will be looked after. Of course, God, her Lover, would look after her, all the same it was the Angel of the Annunciation, when you come to think of it, who was responsible for the fiasco, wasn’t it? I mean he came in all that glory and a dove entered (but here it was a swallow) and love entered and the glamour and the beauty and the hieratic loveliness and the beauty of the moment and the joy of her own realization of her acceptability of God, entrapped her. Well, anyway she was entrapped for God. It was not like the last one but now she began to wonder even if the last one had not been some rapt and perfect cycle compared to this thing. Darrington’s image came before her as she watched Vane. She was asking Vane now for some guarantee that he would look after it and she recalled Darrington, Jerrold with his “lie down darling” and “eau de cologne is best at the nape of the neck and the wrists where the veins beat.” Darrington had lifted the wrists, bathed them in the aromatic sweet stinging scent, recalled her to mountains of flowering oranges, rocks where gorse lay heady and sweet and where the red anemones made the earth a veritable Aetna, all the earth, all that volcanic earth where anemones like poppies were blood stains and foot prints of the dead God. Adonis, Christ died along the slopes of Solaro that pre-war Easter. Eau de cologne and the merciful numbing of consciousness brought those things back, had brought them back, in the first year of mad London. Guns and war and blood-anemones and then the annihilation that smarting of the fragrant scent brought to her. Darrington had been at least a veil, a sort of clod of earth for her numb roots that had reached down and down and deeper than she had then known. Only now she realized with the recurrent symptoms that Darrington had been earth beneath her, mud if you will, slime but substance, rich substance for her down reaching roots, substance so that her flower head might lift the higher into this thing. Darrington had been mud, earth so that she might lift to this Mithraic entity, this god in the sun, this being that had trapped her. She was caught and the recurrent symptoms made her realize that she was not so neatly a painted box, a neat coffin for its keeping. She was being disorganized as the parchment-like plain substance of the germ that holds the butterfly becomes fluid, inchoate, as the very tight bud of her germination became inchoate, frog-shaped small greedy domineering monster. The thing within her made her one with frogs, with eels. She was animal, reptile. Animal, reptile, she still held to the letter of convention. “Will you look — after — it?” “Look after it? I only want the war to be over, us to get some way on firm ground — I only want your wishes in the matter.” This is not what lizard-Hermione wanted. This is not what eel-Hermione, what alligator-Hermione, what sea-gull Hermione was after. She wanted what an animal wants, what an eel wants, what even a bird must have. She didn’t want the letter of the covenant. Vane offered that. “You know I only want — have only wanted—” He would say it again, he only wanted her wishes in the matter. But could he know her wishes? Gabriel of the Annunciation, cold and calm and proffering the lily, what do you know of god-head?
Morgan le Fay. I am witch. I have made this thing. There is, can be, no such room as this in this world, therefore this room is not in this world, therefore we are in some other world. Mrs. Fletcher gone, how wonderful, all the slight pretence, the slight as slight pretence that things are “all right” and Mrs. Fletcher polite but I’m glad she’s gone for she took off just that edge, “madame, would you like a hot-water bottle,” took away the reality of the non-reality, “madame your hot water’s ready,” and the gold film that lay over the house was a little desecrated by her presence. The house was itself now, sunk on its haunches like a lion, tame now, knowing its masters, its lovers, knowing its keepers, its children. Hermione and Vane were children of the old house, the house that was haunted that Mrs. Fletcher had so at the last hated that she had burst into agonizing tears and said she never had known of a gentleman’s house where foxes stole the bacon. Foxes. No hunting. Tracts of moor, tracts of bushes, an adder, great hieratic creature curled in the hollow under the little out-house and Mrs. Fletcher finally deciding that some devil dwelt there. Did he? Someone, something lived in the great house, someone, something smote the beams and some note far and far sounded like some harp, some note, some string of notes, so that Vane seated at his table lifted his head and said “do you hear something?” Hermione had heard something but it was a breath of hearing like the sound you hear as a child in a sea shell of the whole sea. Monks had been driven from this cliff edge by daemons or was it finally that the daemons had been exorcised by monks for now the little church was gone too and the rocks still held the print of waters, of waters, of waters — you might, you did climb down to find Vane staring from unutterable height, white face, moon face stupid against a cone of sky, and waves that walked in. . walked in. . waves here and feet. It was evident that this was rock ledge of Laconian Artemis, some Artemis of the sea, some statue ought obviously to have been there. The house now crouched like a lion feeling its young turn under its supine belly.
“I love the house, Cyril.” “Do you?” “You know I do. Why did Mrs. Fletcher hate it?” “People do. They can rarely rent it.” “Have you bought it?” “I will if you would like it.” “Like it?” Belly of a supine lion, she was Morgan le Fay and she had made this house, this interior, how could she then so like it? “I mean I don’t know that I exactly
The “knockers” knocked according to Cornish tradition, things it seemed to Hermione quite in tradition, not odd there at all, things tradition said out of the forsaken tin-mines — Phoenicians had come here. . Mithraic. . inimical. . not to her inimical. “I don’t understand having a child. It seems to me that I must be having a colt, a frog. It seems to me I must be having a dragon, a butterfly.” Why did she say that?
Morgan le Fay drift in to dinner in an old long semi-precious frock, drift in and seated at the head of the table, queen it over the long room, the odd coloured strips of oriental tapestry, the books and books and the luxury of the great fire making things dance and sing and the beams dance and quiver so that the fire-light is the very quivering of those gold strings that sounded, that they had both heard sounding sounding, leaving almost strips of light in the air, quivering air-strings of vibrant metal, strings, harps. “I think it’s much better since the Fletcher left, more at one, more a piece.” Chatter a little and let this precious red goblet that Vane must have to-night, bring some human colour to your gill-white pallor, Morgan le Fay for they will find you out, and swiftly, they will find you out and swiftly. Chatter a little, laugh, make him think for a moment you have forgotten. “Chilly. Funny and it’s only August.” Outside the deep sea full and sweet and fertile, lay and lifted to an odd sky that was not as other skies (it was 1918) and years were odd things then for the stars wheeled differently, years wheeled differently, hosts of spirits ascended to heaven but here and there daemons watched and sat and guarded mysteries for God, even God who demanded the sacrifice of spirits wheeling toward heaven, knew his people, his odd witches, his eternal guardians of the mystery of wisdom. Wisdom was an adder that had lifted a lithe head so that Mrs. Fletcher on the way to the little out house had fallen screaming into the low prickly gorse, had had actually to be rescued ignominiously, had sobbed and wailed in hysteria of repression, “but gentlemen’s houses—” Gentlemen’s houses were free of adders and raised heads to greet Hermione. God keeps his little secrets. God, you have made me one with you here and the farm girl came regularly, laid dishes, took away plates, cooked their own farm-fowl in their own rare red tomatoes, vegetables, odd red and rich things, different, eating. Hermione eat and don’t sing. Remember some of the testaments of the wise, try to recall wisdom for you are one of the children of Wisdom and God has told you one or another of his little secrets. Hermione, lift the goblet and sip the red wine and smile and be suave for God has told you some of his little secrets but you are in a world of men and men can blight you, men can ruin you. Morgan le Fay try to collect all the little threads of magic for God will take care of you only if you take care of yourself. Men, men, men, men. There were thousands of men. War dripped its rose-red petals, life upon life and love upon love and lilies rose up across the broken trenches. Guns creep nearer, nearer, will the guns prevail? Morgan le Fay drink deep, breathe deep, don’t lose your little witch-like pathos and your witch-like beauty. Not beauty as the world sees it but beauty as Mithra might see it. Morgan le Fay. . “what’s that, Cyril?” “I don’t know, the usual—” “Is it some big — boat?” “How do I know?” Guns, guns, guns, booming in the heavy stillness, guns, horror, listening, all the reality of the witch-world broken in a moment. “O Mamm I must be off. It may be, like last week, another bit of wreckage.” Gone. Little Hezzie from the farm had gone. Adventure. Guns. Boats. Even here, Morgan le Fay. .
Guns, guns, boats. It kept happening. In the heavy August night, guns, guns, boats. Morgan le Fay smile and draw your invisible veil across your invisible eyes and look through the veil at odd inimical creatures, buff creatures, buff creatures, mud-coloured creatures with high boots, polished boots, polished so that you could stoop and grin, grin back Morganlefayishly from polished leather. Has guns, guns, guns broken even your solitude, house like a lion? Will the “knockers” knock across the waste of years, of wreckage flung here on these rocks? Spars floated and bits of wreckage and barrels and kegs were washed up along the cliffs at the bottom of the garden where the shelves had been for so long impenetrable. Where Hermione had actually climbed down and had actually stood where (she was sure) no one had stood, had ever stood, boats now nosed in and nosing polluted clean sand, sand across which Artemis had stepped, taking the shape of wave on wave for her sandalled foot. Guns, guns look, Morgan le Fay, morganlefayishly through your veil drawn to make you invisible and hide yourself and look again. Men, men, men, men, men. Where had these men come from? A great car was drawn up outside the house, outside the empty ruin of the ruined shaft of grey stone that marked the ancient Phoenician tin mine where the knockers came from; Cornwall, Land’s End, motors of the barbaric, like the Roman great cars rolling serenely over magic, over roads made for Phoenician donkeys. You are new, you Romans with your great chariots, Romans, great men with great shoulders. What do you see here, Romans? Romans in great cars, Romans left great cars to prowl about the house, to post little groups of Romans along their coast, to accost Vane with all deference but with a hard finality. His house. Their house. There was need of something. Was it of their house? Romans accosted Vane politely, did not see her, Morgan le Fay, concealed Morganlefayishly to mock and jeer at Romans, men, men, men, men. Were they part of men, men, men, men? What was Vane doing in his gold and slender inviolate youth? There was no more youth like this. Youth now had wings, slid across the layers of the air, slid across ether and prowled in the very bowels of the mid-earth. Youth no longer walked, held its slim inviolate beauty up toward sunlight. Youth wheeled in mighty armoured chariots, youth lay on the metal decks of hideous gun-boats, youth slew and was slain. . the house was desecrate.
Nevertheless, she knew her own terrain, she prowled up toward the carn height and lay in a hot sun that fell and lay and almost lifted her in its pollen dust of weight massive beauty. The men, men, men, were invading their slopes, were desecrating the rocks, were spreading their magic of desecrating wires and were stopping at their kitchen door for water, for fire, for directions now and again from little farm-girl Hezzie. Hezzie looked upon these barbarians as desecrators. These “foreigners.” Hezzie close in the magic of the house, held them at bay, held on to the magic of the house for things like this had never been done, never “had ought to be.” Things that desecrated, that brought back things. Men, men, men and the strange human heart ache. Must she go back to men, men, men? Men could mar or make her. Men could not. Men could do nothing to her for a butterfly, a frog, a soft and luminous moth larva was keeping her safe. She was stronger than men, men, men — she was stronger than guns, guns, guns. The luminous body within her smote her. It was soft and luminous and the colour of the gold sunlight that fell over her. The body within her was a mysterious globe of softly glowing pollen-light. It would give light in the darkness, she was certain, it would give light in the darkness, would, she was certain, glow pollen-wise in the darkness if the rest of her should be darkness, mysterious glow-worm within her would give light, show her the straight path. . and many there be that go in thereat. Straight is the road. Narrow is the path. God is. God is. . mysterious light that would show her, straight and narrow the road to her redemption. She was stronger than men, men, men, men, guns.
But was she? “I can’t stand it.” She didn’t know what she couldn’t stand. She was ill, tired, she wanted something, she didn’t know what she wanted. Vane looked at her with that odd quizzical expression, the same face that had met hers coming straight toward her through rows of statues, — statues, the odd and lovely and sometimes twisted things that Lechstein made, that were statues, statues. The same quizzical, slightly frigid, slightly imbecile stare of the well-bred annunciation angel. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t. “I must go to London. I must see a doctor.” He looked at her as if she were somehow not very well bred, “there’s a doctor in Penzance.” “No, you don’t understand. I must see my doctor, the one I — saw — before.” Now she was back with it, now she had the clue. She saw, seeing Vane not Vane but Darrington. She saw her old experience. She wanted something that would bring her near to Darrington.
Long ago, seeds were dropped in Egypt’s coffins and thousands and thousands of years passed (we all know this) and seeds brought to the light after thousands of thousands of years, sprouted, germinated, were sheer seeds of grain or barley, or of “some other grain” showing after thousands of thousands of years the inventiveness of God. Barley, grain or “it may be of some other seeding” came to light, some tiny green tips of two upward praying Akhnaton-like sun-hands, little sprouts of grain, praying toward the sun, little twin hands, the same always. The utter uninventiveness of God showed here. Seed dropped into a painted coffin was the same seed, the same germination that had always been and Hermione was now sister with every queen, sister with every queen, sister of Cleopatra, of the mother of Jesus, of Caesar’s patrician parent, of every char-woman. Seed that held the globe of the sun, that pollen-light within her. . “it’s as well you came. You couldn’t have carried it another two weeks.” Ether, all the horrors, all the old fears, all the tempest of terror and this, this note of her choice, even now God gave her the choice, take it or leave it. Draw your ugly old clothes together again, smile in a crisp professional manner, “but my husband is now in France and after the last disappointment — I—want it.” Did she want it? Why did Hermione stare in well-bred, well-feigned correctness (it was the right note, babies in war time) at the woman whom she rather dreaded, the same woman, Lady Hewlett, who had helped her, friend of Delia’s, the old horror of the other time, why had she come back to look at her horror, to regard it, why was she doing this? Why had she come from Cornwall, why had Vane come from Cornwall? There seemed no reason under the sun, in the sun for anything but this thing. She followed it with what little brain she had left and seeing the clue, the gold thread she dared see the labyrinth. Horror was still about her but Darrington wrote, had constantly been writing, “have your child, keep well and I will look after it.” Secure still in her Morgan le Fay little witchcraft, she could look at Lady Hewlett and smile and need not apologize for looking shabby (it was the right note in war-time) and say with mock fervour “O isn’t it all splendid, he writes constantly they have them on the run.” Fritz. Who was Fritz? A cypher in the riddle, a damn bad joke, something you had to grin over, brighten over. “Have him on the run.” Smiling, husband so right, not dead (why wasn’t he, posthumous baby) has Fritz on the run. “Mrs. Darrington with great care and a little discomfort—” O yes, that meant wearing that hateful brace, but what did it matter? God had given her the choice even now, it was a mangy sort of choice for she couldn’t help it. It was like “yes I joined the army as a volunteer.” What was it? She didn’t know what it was. She must be very careful.
“Well, what did the doctor say?” She wouldn’t tell Vane what the doctor said. She would smile at a painted annunciation angel who was now nothing, no one, someone who would conceivably help her. She said, “O things seem to be going jolly well.” Affectedly, using a word she never used, smiling at him, being an imitation of something “county” that he must have hated. Smile at him, let your lips curve over your hard skull for you were a queen two thousand of years ago and it’s still
10
God singularly lacks inventiveness and she found herself in the woods, in the forest, in the little old cottage that Delia had lent her years and years ago, again in the little old cottage and Delia being kind, not knowing what had happened, saying “of course take the cottage, Jerrold has been writing me, we must all take care of you.” No, this is no cheat. Morgan le Fay, you must, by your witch-craft make things come true and this cottage is small and pure and clean like a little built-up Hansel and Gretel hut in an old-fashioned operatic stage-set. Songs sing and I am alone and the woods bank the house and flank the house and there is a great waste of stubble and stumps opposite the house for they have cut down all this slope of the hill for air-service, wood, wood, woods, guns, guns, guns reaching even here in this remote Buckingham valley, so remote yet so near London, remote, far away but you can borrow the farm donkey any time and drive in to the station, five miles away for they all knew Delia in the old days, “how is Lady Prescott, is she never coming again to Chissingham?” Delia a sort of goddess in the machine, very much still in the machine, being ground and ground to pulverized nothingness in the machine, look using you I have used the machine, am greater than the machine. O stretch your limbs on the couch, pile pillows back of your head, balsam pillows, gone a little thread bare, boards showing cracks, little summer-house, not a house at all, how heavenly of Delia to really let me have it. Balsam pillows back of her head and she was alone, only Marion Drake from the big house a mile away, Marion their one neighbour in the old days, who (Delia used to wail) spoiled everything, would make a garden party of their week-ends, not understanding really happiness, umbrellas, striped red and vermillion against the beech trees, walls covered with exotic creepers. A garden a mile away and Marion Drake being friendly as far as her ambulance work in the five mile away Twickham would allow her. Thank God for that. Thank God. Marion Drake’s caught in the machine but my husband’s an officer if he isn’t a gentleman and she will plunge in here once a week at any rate sensing my “condition.” Lie on the long couch, pile balsam pillows behind your tousled head, thank God for this security and all the wood you want, scrape it up yourself for the cuttings are free to anybody but the farm people actually have enough wood and I will burn beech boughs, and beech leaves and make songs in the fumes of smoke. . of smoke. . God lacks in inventiveness for this happened in Arcadia (or was it America, the same number of letters, she counted on her fingers, and they look the same) and we wore a bear pelt and worshipped trees, tree boles and knew that men weren’t worth anything except for this and after this, kill the men, queen bees, let your workers sting the useless males to death. Lie with your head propped up by the balsam pillows (I remember that very summer and how we all shredded off needles for these pillows) and let the breath of balsam go deep down, deep down for you need all this Morgan le Fay. Don’t sing, eat. Gather twigs and burn them. Pray to your near gods for God lacks in inventiveness and this has happened — this has happened.
Marion Drake, nice name, name like twist of brown coloured silk, silk that runs from fawn brown to dead leaf brown to adder-skin brown, one into the other without perceptible break in the subtle brown-brown shade of it. Nice brown taste, nice brown feel about her name, “night candles are burnt out and jocund day” but I have no reason to think of that. I don’t like Marion Drake meddling, why can’t she let me alone? I’ll have to rake out clothes, rake over clothes, can’t go up there to tea in my old garden smock, why not? These things are more comfortable now, can’t do it, will have to find some back-wash of pseudo-artistic finery as Marion writes in the little note (left under the butter and eggs basket) that she would be disappointed as the girl (who is she?) has read my lyrics, has never met a “poet,” wants to meet a poet, has been to Greece. Why Greece? What Greece? Greece is a thing of rocks that jag into you, every Greek line of poetry breaks you, jags into you, Hellenes the supreme masochists,
Hellas, Hermione, herons, hypaticas, Heliodora. . did names make people? Was it saying “Hellas” and not “Greece” that was to save her? Speaking herself frigidly (slightly repelled) to this young old creature who had everything (Marion said so) Hermione was repelled and for the same reason strangely lighted, concentrated, brought to some poignant focus. O this was it. This was to be her undoing again, again, again. . she was not to be let drift and merge into the forest, into the cold green, into the cold shadows and the shadows that smelt of grape-blossom though there was never grape flowering in this Buckinghamshire valley forest. Trees smelt of green grape flowers but she was to be recalled, repelled from her musings, brought back; Morgan le Fay smile your little odd twisted smile for another will replace you. Smile and plunge back home into your little forest and say I’ll never see that hateful hard child again, hard, pedantic and so domineering for you are doomed Morgan le Fay. Don’t think you can get out of it. Smile and waste your brain. . try to waste your brain. . you have no brain. . where have I put my Greek Anthology?
Weave, that is your métier, Morgan le Fay, weave subtly, weave grape-green by grape-silver and let your voice weave songs, songs in the little hut that gets so blithely cold, cold with such clarity so that you are like a flower of green-grape flowering in a crystal globe, in an ice globe for the air that you breathe into your lungs makes you too part of the crystal, you are part of the air, part of the crystal, and the air in your lungs and the voice that rises to some impossible silver shrill note in this empty little hut is a voice of silver, you are nothing, a blur of nothing, only the air in your lungs and the beating of your lungs like wings and the high impossible note make you one with beauty, with reality though you are nothing, ugly dark blue mis-shapen gown, stooping to gather twigs, to light the fire, breathe in the fumes of the smoke and you are one with the forest. Gods, daemons. This is your character. Your voices, your lungs (breathing air) chain you to people, you have lungs like people, air is free to all. On the just and unjust. Air. Air is a deity. To-day he wears silver sandals, the frost of sandals is in his breath and when he kisses me I am taken with his winged heels to the top of Olympus and I stand viewing all Hellas. Hellas? Hellas? What of Hellas? O, Hellas was yesterday at Marion’s and that stark note of command, that demanding of me all that I have — what is the girl, she must be foreign, English people never care like this, don’t read everything, she picked my brains, how tired she left me. Morgan le Fay build your pile of branches, blow high your smoke. . breathe in your enchantments with the forest smoke, sing silver. . silver. . for you are doomed.
What is the matter with me? Why can’t I get away from people? I am in several pieces, it’s true, but I gave up the stark glory of the intellect, I chose finally this thing.
Let her be lonely, bother her, there is no such thing as loneliness with a great grey fur rug over your knees. No, there is no such thing as loneliness curled into one corner of a mammoth car, there were no cars like this, how did this come here, great car like a conqueror’s chariot and the wind through the open hood and the world outside made perfect, perfected, and made proportionate to perfection. What do I mean? Why do the trees look so different for they do. It must be just the sheer human perspective but this is luxury and we have all forgotten luxury, we have lived in ditches, for years and years and our lives were light things, pinned lightly to our coats, our brown, fawn brown and horizon blue jackets, tunics, they called them, flowers to be worn lightly, to be tossed away. I have lived so long with trees, with trees that I don’t know what to think, feel like some captured hamadryad under this pelt, this great pelt, how primitive the wealthy are, how primitive this is, rolling on and on and on and the roads are all narrower than they ever were when I walked them, scrambling over the ditches, catching a cluster of red berries to stand in the corner of the clean little hut. All the roads are different. I have no time to remember that that corner held the great orange shaft of late autumn lily that had escaped from the nearby cottage and this is the Tinkers Arms where I stopped that rainy afternoon for tea. Solitude, splendour with a little book in my pocket, tea steaming, “yes, I am here for a few months, my husband is in France. I know Miss Drake.” The country, the country, every inch of it was measurable, English country, being kind to her, why were they kind to her? They were kind in Cornwall, here they were kind to her. Morgan le Fay, great autumn lily wandered from a garden, what are you doing, lover of luxury in these woods, orange lily, glowing with fire, kissed of the fire, in some wood, some beech forest? What are you doing, Morgan le Fay? Drag the pelt over you. It’s getting late. Soon real winter. Prolonged autumn with dark evenings. Sense of mystery in England. England is all a mirage, love it — love it as you love a dream, a place for ghosts, for phantoms, for throw-backs, Morgan le Fay. They were always kind to you in England, I don’t know why, for people say it is a hateful country, why were they so kind? Morgan le Fay, smile Morganlefayishly. . “yes, I loved the drive over. No, not cold.” House full of odd things, chippendale, old hall, was she living here? Don’t ask. What is the weird child doing here? Why didn’t she say something, say “my father paid a billion billion pounds — for that car,” why wasn’t she communicative, say, “I bought this dress at—” but where had she bought the dress? Hermione couldn’t quite “place” the dress. Where had she found the dress, it was too old for her, her shoes weren’t right. Who had dressed her, head pulled forward by the huge coils of braided hair, tea brought in, she was clumsy with the tea-cups. “O let me help you,” but what a thing to say, never met her but once, asking to pour her tea, that hieratic ceremony. The child held the huge tea-pot in small unbelievably fine little hands, hands too small, too small for anything, head too heavy and hands too delicate, too small. Head and hands don’t match, what is the matter with her? Her head is too big, her hands are too small, her eyes are far, far too blue. . “do you — do you — paint?” “
Stark colour broke across an old room, gone dim with light fallen to gold-grey, fallen to grey with the hint of gold that under clouds at sun-set throw over grey water, gone to grey water. . the room was filled with grey water from which odd knobs and handles and the flank of a candle-stick emerged, streaked in the water-grey like metallic gilt sun-fish, flicking here and there fin or under-belly, flicking colour, metallic from and-irons, the claw foot of a table, the reflected fire-light in a polished bowl and the stark upright shafts of hot-house carnations (she had not noticed them before) white wax spikes that glowed now, gave uncommon frost and winter and artificiality to the interior that up till now had been just the web and comfort of a big country room with the firelight and the inexpressible comfort of the great arm-chair after the camp-chairs, deck-chairs and the low crude (but so dear) foot stools of the little cabin shelter. Carnations. “How did they get there?” “What — where?” “I hadn’t noticed the carnations till the sun faded and they glowered out wax-white, taper-white, I hadn’t noticed the scent, now it comes over me, so spiced, so cold, so hieratic in this room that smells of logs, of tea, of comfort, of pot-pourri, I noticed that when I first came in.” “We always have carnations — dada loves them.” “O dada.” Then there was a dada. Who was this dada? My dada paid a billion pounds for the car (but she hadn’t said it). Which car? An emperior. He was Tiberius obviously. “Is your (if you will forgive me) ‘dada,’ Tiberius?” Was it possible that the child could laugh? It seemed so. High, clear, the voice of a boy laughing over a fish that has fallen from his line that he with some arrogant and unexpected gesture has caught back, flung into the net as it was just escaping. The laugh lit the room with the same metallic glamour, the slight note of discord, like clear tropic fish beating up out of grey water. “You don’t seem altogether — English.” This was the sort of thing one never said nowadays. She oughtn’t to have said it. “You see, being myself really American—” would excuse everything, every lapse and the faux pas of intimating anybody wasn’t English in this time. “O but we are — we aren’t—” “I thought so. I mean I thought you were — you weren’t. What (if I’m not being curious)
O this is terrible. At last after all these months. I have found perfection, have fallen into a beautiful chair, have sat throned yet at peace, doesn’t the girl know what is the matter with me? O this is too much, too much. The run over in the great car, the warm rug about my feet, the feeling of the world coming back, yes the “world,” houses with carpets on stairs, windows with curtains drawn, wine in different shaped glasses, stems of glasses in a circle on white damask and flowers in the centre of the table, made artificial by the stiff upright symmetry of them. Flowers on tables and curtains drawn and the right side of the right person at the right dinner at Delia Prescott’s, all those things came back when I sank in this chair, smelt the translucent fumes of tea that was real tea, tea a ceremony, Chinese. . what was it? All that had come to Hermione in her corner of the room, in her great chair and now all that was going. Didn’t the girl understand? No, it would be like Marion, wrong kind of delicacy, never to have told her about the baby and after all, here is this child, perhaps she knows nothing at all. O impossible! Yet staring back into eyes that stared and stared (now that she was just leaving) Hermione asked herself if perhaps she wasn’t in some net of wrong enchantment, must pay, it seems for everything, but this was too much to pay for beauty and seclusion and the trees going past the open car window all in proportion. Paintable. Things seen in perspective become things to be grappled with. Art. Isn’t art just re-adjusting nature to some intellectual focus? The things are there all the time, but art, a Chinese bowl, a Chinese idol, a brass candle-stick make a focus, a sense of proportion like turning the little wheel of an opera glass, getting a great mass of inchoate colour and form into focus, focussing on one small aspect of life though really it is only a tiny circle, a tiny circle. You get life into a tiny circle by art and that was where Morgan le Fay was wrong with her craft for she would say all art is man’s mere imagining and see, the shell by the shore, the one petal of a water-lily is a sort of crystal glass, a bright surface and you yourself staring at it, may make things in the air, pictures, images, things beyond beauty beautiful. But there is where Morgan le Fay was wrong. We are strung together, we all have lungs, must breathe, breathe, breathe, we men and gods, rather we men and demi-gods for Morgan le Fay and Circe and Cassandra and the Oreads and Hermione were only half-people, half gods, demi-divinities like this child whom now half-god Hermione saw was also one of the half-people. O what good did motor cars do anyway and having Tiberius for a father if you had to stare this way? Now sinking back in her chair having almost said good-bye, Hermione must ask her.
“What is it in your eyes. I’m awfully sorry (will the man mind waiting another ten minutes?). I can’t go home all alone without knowing. You will I am sure forgive me. I want to know what it is in your eyes for they have looked at me and looked at me, seeming to want to tear something out of me like evil-minded urchin opening up a chrysalis to see the unborn butterfly. I am sorry if I have been uncomprehending. It’s true you wrote me you were lonely. I have forgotten for a long time the meaning of that word for I am — I am—” but she couldn’t tell her that. It occurred to Hermione suddenly that the child might hate her, turn against her, consider her beyond the pale, a woman with a fine leashed intellect (for the child adored the intellect) having so far forsaken the snow-white arcana of Pallas, so far as to fall. . fall. . fall. . there were other islands. She wanted to tell the child about those other islands. “There are other haunts, not of the intellect.” The child said simply staring with the eyes that weren’t now blue at all, gone grey as if a film of ice lay with devastating blight across a space of blue and heaven-blue gentians. That was the trouble, that was what unnerved. The eyes were glazed over like the eyes of the blind. There was something odd, unseemly, difficult. Hermione wanted to get out, get away, hold on to her web of gauze, continue the melting loveliness into her own room, take it back with her to spread it like thin honey over the plain wheat-bread of her plain days. She wanted to eat the gauze with her spirit, make it her own, take it back, treasure it and let flecks of it brighten days and days. . for days after all were days and sometimes drawing the water from the little well, wandering up to the distant farm for her supplies, waiting at the post office for her notes from Darrington (Darrington was writing, writing to her) she felt days as days. . heavy lead-winged days that had to be endured for at the end of days and days there were worse days. . worse days. . days of fire and slaughter. . madness, no, she daren’t think, had morganlefayed it, made herself a dream in a dream to sustain herself, to sustain the small le Fay. What was this staring at her? Was it another child, child of her mind, her spirit? Did God increase his burden. . to him that hath. . shall be given. . but she didn’t want this mad child vamping her. She couldn’t stand perils of the intellect. She wanted to escape the mind and all it stood for. She wanted to take from this girl not give to her. “I know. I suppose you wanted to paint. It was like that with me — only music—” What was she going to say, where was it going to take her? “I shouldn’t think too much, wait a little — wait a little—” The girl said surprisingly yet not to Hermione at all surprisingly, “I can’t wait much longer. I’ve thought it all out. I can’t have what I want, paint, the smell of it, boxes of paints, freedom — I’m going to kill myself — it isn’t exactly anybody’s fault — but I can’t stand it.” “Can’t stand — what?” “Everything. Nothing. All things. Nothing at all. Myself chiefly.”
11
She was too young to talk about self, self, self — what was self? Self was a white carnation in a tall, green tumbler, (you can’t kill your
Her eyes were the wicked eyes of a child, some wicked, excruciating son of Darius splitting open a chrysalis, now so soon of itself to be split. . it was more wicked now even than in Buckinghamshire for now the chrysalis was so near, only a little while. “I must move out to Richmond, then you will come to Richmond,” but she was asking it as a sort of duty, hating the girl, hating the eyes that split her open. Why didn’t the mouth speak, beguile the eyes? The mouth was too perfect, a little too wide, but in shape too perfect, but it had to be wide, that perfect mouth to cover that row of beauty. Hers were straight, beautiful, like a young lion’s teeth, not cruel like an old lion, like a young lion, teeth that could worry bird feathers — teeth that gave back the authentic sheen and shimmer that those pearls painted on that parody of the child throat did not pretend to give. . teeth. . pearls. “That picture isn’t — like — you.” But now she was being rude, holding herself in so many layers, so carefully housed, self and self and all confused and blurred by the cocoon state she was in. Self. What is self? Self is a lotus bud slimed over in mud. Small le Fay, you are more a self than I am, but I am giving myself to you to make a self. Are you giving yourself to me to make a self? What is a self? She was too young to say that. She had said months ago in Buckinghamshire that she couldn’t stand anything, most things, what things, herself chiefly. She had said that. She was too young to say she didn’t like herself. Beryl. Her name was Beryl. It was impossible, had from the first been impossible, that her name could be anything but Beryl. It might be — it might be — what might her name be? Beryl, Beryl, Beryl. Yes, her name was right. Beryl was her name. Beryl. She was nothing but a name, nothing but those jewels staring at her, making Hermione into something that wasn’t Hermione. Hermione was a cocoon, a blur of gold and gilt, a gauze net that had trapped a butterfly, that had trapped a thing that would soon be a butterfly. Hermione must stay a net of gauze, not be beguiled by eyes into some open rock-hewn wind blown spaces of the intellect. You see the intellect is Greek and if you are having a le Fay, a small le Fay, you must not be Greek. Let the intellect sink like a great white god, Pallas, or Helios, God, intellect into the ripples of self. What is self? Self is a great stone, a mill-stone, the intellect sunk and self is the ripples of sub-conscious or super-conscious gold over and over and over. Beryl was a lode-stone, a magnet, a devastating cruel daemon who would not let it rest, would not let it rest. . “but
You can’t go on with this, you can’t go on with this. Names were stones, were jewels, Catullus, a red lump of uncut slightly dulled over, dimmed over garnet as if the froth of wine had left its dim froth of scum on a red stone but he was not transparent, even translucent like Propertius, but he should be. Verses, carved and hammered, the Sapphics of Catullus, were small garnets giving back light, but you see what I mean, the feel of Catullus in the throat (the very u, u, u, of it, the stress on the u in your mind) makes the heavy froth or scum of grapes that blur over the texture of pure red and make it a blood stone, semi-precious but a weight about your throat — O weight of beauty about thin throat that rises, Morgan le Fay to escape — to escape — there is no escape — blue eyes say so, the eyes of some Persian magnate’s horrible boy child, eyes of a prince, the Beryl eyes of Beryl, Beryl. Beauty is Hell — should one say that at her? Hysteria. Don’t let me get hysterical for she makes me see things, the scum rises, floats and finally my brain looks out and I can’t let it, I can’t let that happen or I will go mad and the le Fay will be queer — odd — a monster not a small thing, amber and gold, floating to life, borne here like a golden willow catkin down a stream — down a stream— “Yes you should read it, learn Latin (it’s a pity you hate it) just for eras amet—” O God. Where do these things come from? “I know I’m indulging myself—” what a word, what an idea—“but may I have more — tea. Those sandwiches are so delightful”—words, what words — they were talking of Catullus, “I don’t know why I like, why I dislike. I am no critic of letters.” Letters. Cras amet. Someone had to love these things.
This thing would prolong itself and clocks were striking. Hermione was in a world of mystery for a great house on Curzon Street is always mysterious. Thank God we were not born on Curzon Street for Curzon Street (say it, you will see what I mean) holds mystery. Clocks were striking, striking, silver and one not as far as the others with chimes. It sang its silly silver song and sang it again and a third time. “One quarter’s missing, like the moon three quarters full.” Ah that was herself, that was Hermione. “A most awkward shape, the shape of the three quarters striking but the chimes are pretty—” Silver, silver, answering silver, silver. Was she dead? Was she enchanted, under the sea in this house on Curzon Street? “Are you — alone?” No one about, nothing. Catullus filled the room for his name lingered and clung like the very wine lees against the marble (in the far corner) of some second rate 1880 French goddess. A sort of small Fragonard Clytie by way of the Luxembourg. The small wrong goddess was right here and like the wax white carnations brought the taste, the character of the owner of it. Dada. Tiberius. Hermione could smell the scent of his excellent cigars, could see the lilt of light (blood-stones, Catullus) in his super after-dinner port. “Port. Do you like it? I was thinking of Catullus”—but she wasn’t. Chimes, silver. Enchantment. Why did the girl stare and still stare at her?
The eyes would still stare at her the other side of — the other side of — Styx. There
But blue eyes, evil eyes, were calling her out of that nebulous world into which she had so softly fallen, blue eyes were dragging her ashore as one drags the mercifully almost dead to land, blue eyes were working their horrible first aid and were calling, calling to something in Hermione that was lost, that was forgotten, that had slid away, been taken away just as the guns, helmets, bombs, gas masks (what not) had been taken from odd smoke blue soldiers on a bench. Hermione was defenceless and blue eyes called her back to war, to fight, to resist, to appeal. “What do you think of Middleton?” O stuffy books. Couldn’t she let stuffy books alone. Books were books, part of the old world, part of the people who didn’t understand that the world was dead, its heart had stopped beating, guns, guns, guns, you never felt their throb and tremble till they were gone as you never feel the heart beating in you, till it is gone and you are dead. When you are dead, there is merciful quiet and you realize all, all your life you have been slightly listening, slightly asquint as it were mentally, listening, waiting, listening and a little afraid all, all your life, lest it should stop, should stop and you not know it had stopped. It was like that when the guns stopped but most people didn’t know, were still alive (they called it) not drawn out of life, out of the pulse and beat and throb of it like blue, smoke blue soldiers on a bench watching people pass, saying crude and ugly things but all the time at peace with great peace knowing they were dead, not listening any more, not waiting any more; pulse stopped beating. It was so marvellous and nobody knew. No one at all seemed to know but you can’t tell them about it, any more than an Indian mystic (or some illiterate mumbling person) can tell you about your aura; it is blue, it is grey, it is opal clouded with amber. Amber clouded with opal. That would be a lovely aura, some little sempstress in a corner working, sewing, with pricked rough fingers might have it and a great lord who commanded men, men, men, guns, guns, guns to move up, across to men, men, guns might be sodden illiterate green or grey striped with a nothing of blue-smear, no real blue like a convolvulus petal that has been crushed, smeared on an asphalt pavement. That is how it is with auras, with illiterate people seeing, sensing, not actually seeing (but it was only the illusion of mist) that aura and Beryl had not seen it. It was just that kingdom of heaven and being like a little child, accepting everything, like the soldiers on the bench, like Hermione, honourable wounds, dishonourable wounds, it’s all one to God so long as you are wounded. . because she loved much. So it was like that and Beryl with voracious eyes and brilliant intellect was talking of Middleton and Hermione propped up in the one big chair that her room boasted must answer, find an answer. . Middleton? Who was Middleton? “O yes. I think his horse play is legitimate — Aristophanic—”
She had said the right thing by accident, her brain seemed to work that way, automatically but she couldn’t go on expecting the right answer, like throwing dice and expecting double sixes every other time. . why didn’t the girl go? Brain went on (she had tested it) on a rail all by itself though brain was (she had tested it) a white marble statue, a bronze heavy thing that had sunk, had sunk, irrevocably like the precious cargoes of Corinthian plunder that had sunk. . had sunk. . “didn’t they want last winter? I mean winters, and winters ago, to drag Lake Nervii?” Yes, Lake Nervii. Where had that come from? Outside Rome, she and Darrington had walked the whole way outside the gates proper, walked up and up and up through winter olives and on and on and on through winter olives (there were violets, winter violets) and winter was a clear hard spring with almond blossoms like clear hard shells flung against a blue, blue, blue that wasn’t a dome but simply a waste of space going on and on and on. . olives. “I remember last winter — I mean winters and winters ago — a winter in Rome and how we walked, my husband, Jerrold Darrington and I, miles and miles and found the lake. We didn’t get to the opposite side though they say there is a whole area there, almost another unexplored Pompeii.” Hermione had determined to sink into her own self-made aura. Herself had woven herself an aura, a net, a soft and luminous cocoon but somehow daemon eyes drew out of her all these things, all these other things. Was the girl a witch, some bad thing, some evil thing? Why did the girl draw these things out of her, things that came automatically, a sort of superior intellectual psycho-analysis, going on and on and she wanted to drift, had been drifting, had not thought of the galley sunk in Lake Nervii for years and years, did not believe she had ever thought of it since that winter day, winters and winters ago. Why did the girl do this? How did she? “What in God’s name is the—” She couldn’t say “
Syracuse, Syracuse, Syracuse. Why do you say that name? Hermione. Your name is Hermione not Morganlefay, what a pity, for Morganlefay was such a comfortable person, don’t you know what I mean, aura like a willow catkin, aura and flower of self blurred over, not really flowering, shining like penumbra of the harvest moon, glowing a sort of yellow, the heat the willow catkins give off in the spring, the colour of the blobs and blobs of willow dust reflected in silver, a silver reflection of gold aura of willow catkins, that is the aura of Morgan le Fay. What a pity that a name, just a name spoken (Syracuse, Syracuse) does something, it’s odd how names (Greek names like that) never lose, never have lost their potency. And it’s rather horrible. For if you say Syracuse it’s like a knife and it’s like a crescent moon and it might do terrific damage. You must be careful how you use these Greek names. People are right, nice comfortable people in comfortable houses, these Greek names are dangerous, don’t have any Greek about, it’s a sort of white gun-powder. It’s right not to encourage people, children, learning Greek, gun-powder white or black is gun-powder and we’re tired of fighting, all that happened in 17, 18 or was it 19. It might have been just 17 a long time ago in Syracuse, 17 B.C. or A.D., something of the sort for the name Syracuse breaks down the centuries, there remains nothing but the name, white gun-powder, powder made from temple pillars riven and split and ground to dust. Those columns had to be riven and split and ground to dust. Those statues had to be riven and split and ground to dust. Out of the dust, the most minute electric distillation was contrived and gun-powder resides in the words, the electric shimmer of the sun on those shafts of marble, the sun and glint of the sun on the uplifted forearm of some Hermes set against a background of livid green-black laurel. The sun and glint of sun on marble remains in just such words, in Syracuse for example. Take a poster with “see sunny Italy” and read “Syracuse” in a dark tunnel of a railway station and shut your eyes for in a moment the whole station may explode; that’s the way with those words but they bide their time. Treat them carefully, speak to them, speak them (if you dare) softly, intone, sing or chant or whisper them. But know — know — know — that they are full of power. When the gods will, they will rain those words again on us, poor earth, poor penumbra of an earth, not worth destroying.
It’s too late now, Morgan le Fay. Don’t try to be too inappositely feminine. But I must be. I am having a small le Fay. This is evil and bad of some one, something to send this fantastically wealthy de Rothfeldt girl to me. If I can do without a husband (O put this foot stool under your feet, we—
12
An arm pushed back. “I don’t know what’s happened. I waited a long time. There are green dog-woods sweeping over the bed and that photograph on the mantel piece is Jerrold, my husband — husband — husband — you see he is my husband — he wants to look after it — he says he will — husband — but are you — what are you — khaki arm — are you a husband?” The arm pushed Hermione back, she was pushed back and inappositely the arm that was an English khaki arm pushed through green branches of American dog-wood and the heavy scentless blossoms swept like white ivory and heavy froth of white on sea shells over her crumpled coverlet. “Have you no fires here at all?” “O we did have once — no coal now — I am a newcomer. I came only a few weeks ago to be near St. Mary’s nursing home—” “I know all that. Have you — no fires here?” The face above her was the face of a stranger. How had it got here? “How did you get here?” “The people next door said you’d not been moving about for some time — hadn’t heard you. My patient next door, it appears, got used to you, listened—” “Next door? Where am I?” Next door. That was Lilian and the Grex girls and stealing lilacs and the dog that had puppies and the several kinds of butterflies and “you know my grandfather always knew them — all their names. We had a glass case of them hanging over his desk — and the bald-headed eagle—” The face was a strange face but not strange for it appeared over the top. . over the top. . the face appeared over the top — khaki, neat collar, nice collar, elegant cuff. “What is this on your cuff?” “It’s wings — air service — I’m out on special duty-epidemic—” Face that neither smiled nor scolded, just looking at her while the arms held her down, while the hands, thin hands, brown hands smoothed the coverlet, “I’ll send the nurse in here. . my next door patient’s better.”
“No. But don’t go.” Hermione realised now in a moment a great gap. There was a gap. A gap that must be filled. Her hands reached up and her hands clung to khaki — it must be Jerrold, they all looked like that and it was Jerrold and anyone would do but no one would do, never the man in the next room whom she had smiled at once on the stairs and is that what had saved her? Was it Morganlefay who had smiled that had saved her? You never know what will, what is going to save you. You sneak through life, up and down stairs and the wall paper was a funny bright rose-salmon but she had rather liked it, on the stairs, brightening the stairs, clean little house, little house where they had taken her, let her have a room for a few weeks while she waited as Beryl had run her out (she must be all right, “yes I have a husband”) in the motor car. Little house that had been rather funny and clean and full of people that hadn’t mattered, that Hermione had seen through a mist, through the gold gauze that was the aura of Morganlefay who was waiting, of Morganlefay who would morganlefay it to the very bitter last end, smiling at someone on the stairs that hadn’t mattered, that now mattered. In life you never know who will, who won’t matter. They descend, they fall, they rise, they swim in and out of your life for life is the swaying up and the swaying down of great forest branches and clinging to life, to Jerrold, to khaki shoulders, Hermione realized that at last, at last she was lost, for clinging to khaki shoulders she realised that in all those months (nine now almost) she had had no one, no one’s shoulders, that’s wrong. But of course Morganlefay would be like that, run away, be a queen in the forest; it can’t matter if men don’t want you, Undine for a small Undine wants you. No one wants you. No one wants you. But someone does. Someone did. Someone was lonely, a little man who had been in munitions who had the room next door. Had no one ever, ever smiled at him that he must treasure a ghost smile, the smile of a mere outsider, a half-creature, an Undine, an Oread? Do men get so lonely that they must love an Oread? There are women, women, women, women in the street, on the stairs, in railway carriages brushing past you, brushing past you on the stairs little man. You are a little man. Why did you smile and why did you listen? Woods bend, woods bend. The arms were strong but thin and pushed her away, away. O don’t you push me away. If you push me away I know that’s the last. I know then that I am pushed away forever. Don’t push me away. I’m married. “My — husband — is — in France.” Khaki. Khaki. It would save her. It must save her. The wings on his wrist were wings. He wasn’t a man. He was more than a man being less than a man, being an angel. Less than a man he was a man, he was an Angel. Azrael. He was a doctor. Doctors have to do things like this, shutting down eyes. If he put his fingers on her eyes, she would shut them, never, never open them. If he put his fingers on her eyes, she would shut them, never open them. She wouldn’t let him. Her hands slid from smooth thin shoulders and slid down to wrists and clung to fingers. “My — husband — is — in — France.” The thin fingers drew away, drew away, drew away, if he pushed her away now, the one man to whom she had clung, toward whom she had reached in all these months, she would be dead — float down the river — be quite happy. Man, men, men, men, men. Guns, guns. The guns had stopped or was it a heart? Trees wafted great branches and if he pushed her away she would be lost but she could be lost for the twisted little man who had been in munitions and hadn’t wanted to go home and had kept on his room here perhaps he hadn’t a home, what is a home, who was gruff and common had heard her not moving. Were one’s last moments then of so, so great importance? The little man in the next room was a sort of little Buddha, he increased, great in magnitude. He had heard her open her cup-boards, heard the rattling of the curtain rings, heard her spilling out her tooth brush water. The little man had heard her pull her chair forward, had heard her drop her book or heard her scraping in the far corner (which was to him the near corner) for slippers on the floor, heard her move and walk out, not heard any more. . had he nothing to do but listen? “Why did he listen to me?” Had she said that? Had she thought that? More than the little man who was nobody (who had been in munitions in the next room) was this one. This one was more than the other one for he answered questions, did not ask questions. The little man in the next room was a sort of cherry-wood carved Buddha who watched but this was a different kind of god. He answered all your questions. “Why did he listen?” “He listened as invalids have nothing to do but listen”—had answered her question not scolding her, not pushing her away, holding her shoulders, smoothing out the bed clothes. . “you must be — very — careful—” Now if he scolded her she would go away, drift away. It would all be very simple. He might scold her and she would drift away like cutting the cable — of — a boat — of a canoe. Canoe drifts under dog-wood blossoms and the boughs of trees arch over water, the salt creek, we can go on and on and on, then leave the canoe and tramp that half mile inland for the water lilies. Water lilies had grown near salt pools, across dunes. . sand. “Why must — I—be — so — careful?” Of course one must be, the boat might upset at a breath, don’t let the paddle tangle in those weeds, dangerous, it’s scraping pebbles. . dangerous. . canoes — water lilies just beyond—“Why — must — I be so — careful?” Pushing her down, pushing her down — she would drown in water lily petals — just the way to drown—“you must — remember—” Remember. Mnemosyne the mother of the muses. One, two, three to nine. Nine muses. You must be very careful for the nine muses dance, clasp hands in a ring — mustn’t miss the dance, ring, nine — nine — nine— “Why?” Ask it. Ask it for you have — forgotten.
13
“Pity you had that set-back.” It was Darrington. Hermione saw Darrington sitting in the arm-chair drawn close to the bed edge. This was really Jerrold, the brown face, the close cropped head, the stick that he held in his hand, elegant stick, he was a visitor here, elegant stick that made all nothing, dispersed all the past, the khaki upon khaki, the boom of distant thunders with a wave of a magician’s wand. Darrington was Darrington again. Darrington was Jerrold, thicker a little, heavier, but Darrington with his coat cut modishly with his shoes, with his trousers, something that took her back, in spite of herself, because of herself, something other, something different. Darrington played with the stick, his hands were firm and white fleshed at the knuckles, his hands were finer, whiter than the burnt brick of his still somewhat foreign face quite warranted. Hermione propped aloft, regarded the white knuckles, remembered sonnets, canzoni, songs, letters. . things Darrington had written. “How’s Louise?” “O Louise?” Darrington lifted heavy eye-brows and his hands stopped fingering the ebony stick, looked across at Hermione, smiled across at her and smiling, his smile with a conjuror’s magic brought back camellias, white and red, red rosettes and white rosettes that they had gathered, scraped from the clean sand of the paths to lay on the stone of Shelley, to make a circle, red rosettes, white rosettes across the stone, across the words carved in the tomb of Shelley, “
Over the top. . Hermione had to stop, to draw herself in, to drag herself back. Over the top. . of what? She remembered swiftly “O after my little set-back, they said it might be later. . earlier. . they didn’t know. It might happen any day now.”
But that that was going to happen was nothing to her now. Something had happened, more strange, more miraculous than anything that could ever happen. Darrington was with her, beside her, a Darrington had crept out of the brown lean khaki, like a great moth, elegant in shape, still a little foreign in his bronze but all different. Who ever said clothes made the man — did or didn’t make the man? For clothes made Darrington smile with an old pre-chasm smile. The smile Darrington smiled had nothing to do with rows and rows of livid dead, with barbed wire, with the flare of red or green blazing above broken trenches, with the drone of planes, with the sudden flare and drop of bombs, with “over the top” (though incongruously he had just said it) with “Mademoiselle in the family way” (though she was patently) with “scrounging” (though she had. Beryl had brought the exquisite bed-jacket, everything) with “going west” (though she had, patently, had come back again, had been dead, was now alive) with “that’s the stuff to give ’em.” Darrington smiled a smile that erased all that, the smudged out image of the war, of terrible things that had happened, of Louise and Florient and Merry. “O Merry. Where is she? I have quite forgotten.” Darrington went on smiling. He reached toward her and his hand found hers and his kisses found hers. . “Forgotten. . never see. .” He had forgotten something, they had all forgotten something. Darrington and Hermione were wedded in this new understanding. He had forgotten. She had forgotten. He was going to take care of her and he had come back and he was so happy and everything was going to be all right. Forgotten. Merry was forgotten. Louise was forgotten. O far and far and far, pre-chasm things came back, the smell of the ice-cold corridors of the Louvre on a summer day and the hot sound that was “deux sous la botte,” the little boy who pursued them down the rue du Four and the carnations, the pink spice-sweet little garden oeillets that Jerrold would buy from him. “Do you remember those pinks you used to get me? Sops in wine you used to call them. Wine pink. Pink. French.” Darrington remembered and thinking of wine pinks, fragrance was about her. England was gone. Faces, people, people, faces. “Little Vérène, poor little Vérène. .” “Vérène?” “Didn’t you know? You’ve forgotten. . so had I till only the other day when Delia came to see me.” “O delicious Delia. . is she still?” “No. Tired but smiling through it. Lost. Gone. She’s still alive.” “That’s something.” “But Vérène. . most hideous of calamities. . Walter. .” “O forgeron. Poor beast. .” “Beast, yes. Like a great white sacrificial ox. Great white creature, spending his time playing for wounded poilus, odd things, red cross (or the French equivalent) concerts. He was born you know (an American) in Munich.” “All rather complicated. .” “Yes. Vérène’s mad.”
It seemed so long ago. That they should still be holding on to life with such tenuous threads and Hermione pulled threads to get something of that pre-chasm into her speech and all the pre-chasm was as she recalled it, worse even than their own particular and unique Purgatory. Other things. Other people. Things that had existed in one dimension, that couldn’t any more so exist. You couldn’t any more move on a straight line, you advanced in a spiral and as you grew nearer to the higher things (nearer to the higher? What muddlings) you grew more vague, no, more distinct, but a distinctness in vagueness that was most tantalizing. Get across the chasm, for those things had existed. Get across the chasm for this thing that holds you in its arms is pre-chasm, a little heavier but kisses that she had lost, that had been blinded, blotted out in a dark cloud. Get across the chasm to the other side for there are dreams still the other side, ivory, bronze. Dreams dwell in ivory and bronze, the Narcissus of the Naples gallery. “Do you remember the blue-fire phosphorescence of the huge blue deep sea sort of jelly fish that so fascinated me in the aquarium?” “Aquarium?” “Naples. I seem to be in two sets of perceptions. . blue green of phosphorescent fire and static bronzes. That Narcissus, you remember. Two sets of clearly defined perceptions. We’ll never any more be able to see anything straight on — clear—” “But we do, darling.”
“Vérène’s I told you, mad. You don’t seem interested.” “I am. Only aren’t we, all? What’s odd, incongruous—” “O, I don’t mean like that — like we say it, she’s mad, you know. I mean insane, insane, locked up.” “Where — how — why — I don’t understand.” They were drawing things out of the depth, pre-chasm to observe them. Things she had for years forgotten now came back— “How did it happen?” “I don’t know. Delia told me and it seemed like the end of a story. A story I had read, put aside, forgotten and then years and years afterwards (five years?) found again, finished, done for. It made me feel something was finished — the old régime I suppose — all the old beautiful intensity, the France we loved — Vérène so smug. She’s not now. O poor little ignorant smug little tight closed, wide open French rose. So smug, so secure and always so sure that everything would come right once one was married — do you remember?” “It links on somehow to that queer girl—” “Shirley yes. Also pre-chasm — a clean bullet, finished.” “And the other queer creature?” His breath was on her face. His ebony stick had slid to the floor. “Be careful — I get — tired—” His breath was on her face and it appeared in one sudden moment of illumination that this was not right. Vérène went mad since she couldn’t (it was evident) march with events. Shirley shot herself since she couldn’t march forward. Wasn’t that it? The wave had lifted them to the crest. One must roll in, on with the tide, with the times, or be crushed under the wave, ground to death in the trough and the great drag back that would be the inevitable aftermath of the war and all it stood for. All those lovely years. Vérène, delicious Delia, all the funny people, someone with a monocle at Delia’s, someone saying someone was like Nero, some girl who spilled hair-pins, hydrangeas and the smoke blue of odd conservatory colours, George with his
Kisses held Morgan le Fay and she was Circe, Calypso to those kisses. She hadn’t strength against them. She was smothered and kisses recalled her to worlds away, pre-chasm. Would she go on with Darrington? She felt the kisses and she felt herself numbed, pollen dusted over with the kisses. Kisses brought back people, pictures, a honey-coloured Correggio nymph, the wide wings of the marble Nike. Wings of marble, islands of yellow stone, amber lights against rocks where the sea weed caught sunlight in its translucent surface. Ivory of small winged Erotes. Some Dionysus with a head band. The Nereids— “Do you remember those violets that you used to get me?”
He remembered the violets. He remembered everything. They remembered far and far back as if the years of terror (five was it?) never had been, had been some fulsome nightmare. Clear out of the years of terror the past rose, rose and cleft the years of terror like white lightning, a black storm cloud. The past, images of the past that had all the time been there, that had been buried under the stench of lava and molten metal, of guns and broken trenches, of earth mounds that were graves, the very substance of volcanic furious, the past, all the past had been there, all the time, white, in clear images, people, things, all the people, all the things and in some moment of rapport, holding her close, forgetting (both of them) all incidents of mere Louise, Merry or Cyril Vane, they conjured back the past, at one in a rapt intensity. The past rose and broke across the present, broke across the five years of dark disaster like some dancer that steps half-naked before a black drop-curtain. The past seemed safe and secure and the war was but a curtain that had fallen, “you will come, you will come back — Astraea?” He had conjured the past with a wave of his ebony stick, she had renewed the past with the white swansdown on her blue bed-jacket. Watchet blue, he called it. It was the colour of the blue eyes of Fayne Rabb.
Almost as if her thoughts had been his thoughts, though she had never spoken of her and the days of odd upheaval stood between them and this was the first time that he had been allowed to come to see her since — almost as if her thought that had risen like the half-naked dancer, gracious, sinuous, before the black drop-curtain, almost as if his thoughts had been her thoughts and as if the past was a very visible embodied image, Jerrold Darrington said, “yes, Phoebe is a pretty name for it. But one’s name’s a little awkward sometimes.” Darrington was looking at the very beautiful small doll with black hair that lay asleep in a wide basket. He said, “why don’t you name its other name, Fayne Rabb?”
14
“I don’t understand.” Hermione was facing Darrington. The room in the little Soho hotel that he had asked her to, was narrow with the window (top floor) overlooking a narrow side-street, overlooking the narrow debouching door of the Temple Theatre opposite. The room had grown narrow, it appeared, while she regarded it for at first the room containing Darrington had contained Italy, the slopes of Monte Solaro, anemones blooming pre-war Easter red and the blood red of the foot steps of Adonis that had been the atrocious wooden image that they had carried to the songs of pre-Hellenic old volcanic southern gypsy chanting. Christ had died and Christ was to be born again. Red anemones had flowered against the dim shabby paper of the narrow room and red anemones had fallen beneath her feet and had burned the very soles of her feet as she had stepped tentatively out of her bed cold mornings, mist cold early spring mornings, mornings over Soho like a brides veil for she was that in her renewed love of Jerrold. The narrow room with the stained sulphur coloured paper had been wide tunnel toward enchantment. At the end of the now narrow room, like vision projected by an enchanter’s magic, there had been the white cone of Vesuvius, the shale that had been the other side of Vesuvius, the side that sloped toward Pompeii, that was shale and scattered vineyard when seen from Herculaneum. The room with its narrow sordid proportion and its one narrow meagrely curtained window looking over the Soho back street had been wide and marvellous, a small concentrated space, like the tube of the Indian mystic, self-made from which, or at the end of which, he projects images of marvellous reality. The wall paper, Hermione now observed, was the mustiest of faded mustard yellow. The wall paper, Hermione saw it for the first time, was faded with a smudgy uneven spottiness that let show through the mustard like spots, the egg-stain like spots of singularly mal-formed tuberous yellow rose buds. The room became a room in Soho and the paper sordid as she saw it. The room shrank. “I don’t understand you at all. You go off on a vulgar escapade with Vane. You have this child—” “I thought we had talked all that out before. I thought it was arranged that it should — be — yours—” “How could it ever be mine? How could you ever be mine?” “Then why did you ask me to come back here? I might have — stayed — with—” She might have stayed with Vane. But she didn’t say it. She didn’t even think it really for she could never have stayed with Vane. The room shrank to its mean proportion. “What are we going to do anyway about it?”
“I told you I had Beryl arrange for the baby at that officers’ wives’ farm home for a few weeks—” “A few weeks — there’s always afterwards.”
Afterwards — afterwards— But why hadn’t he thought of that before? Was the strain too great — was Darrington some monster simply who was sent to persecute her? “I tell you I love Louise.” “Why didn’t you tell me that before I came back?” “I didn’t want to hurt you.” “Rot. You’d hurt me enough. You hurt me long ago. Why didn’t you say simply you were going to carry on with Louise—” Hermione heard the words, listened to herself speaking the words. “You go at once and register that child as Vane’s.”
Register the child. She had not thought of registering the child. There had already been preliminary taken for granted registration of the child — Mrs. Jerrold Darrington — baby, female — Phoebe Fayne. There had already been that. Why begin again? Why begin again? What was Darrington after? What was it all about? “Why hadn’t you seen this before — made it clear sooner?” Her words like white lead came from her with the force of something beyond Hermione. Hermione, worn past endurance, found words that she had never dreamed she had the strength to utter, forming somewhere white bullets, white searing lead, in the inside of her now cold head, and white bullets, white searing lead, projected outwards, out and out and out into a void where Darrington was, where Jerrold was. Someone was standing before her, someone who had nothing to do with Jerrold, some odd, uncanny and evil metamorphosis, evil and evil and bloated and dull as that very Cretan Minotaur. Minotaur sent to destroy the Athenian youth, to destroy beauty, Minotaur of wickedness. . Hermione no longer recognised this creature, herself one white frozen heat of flame repudiated some obscene creature who suggested obscene and evil things. “Register it? But that’s the merest legal formality. You said it was to be yours. I have your letters. You urged me on to have it. You let me go through with it though I was crippled with the last one and you let my friends (my bloated millionaire friends as you call them) see me through the added expense of the pneumonia and that dreadful set-back that meant that double nursing and impossible delicacies. You let me do that and you asked me, comfortably out of it, out of this world, to come back to Soho.”
Trampled flowers smell sweet. But there is a murderous ox foot, a cloven devil foot. Was it the war simply, that walked forward that would crush with devil horns and great brute devil forehead the tenderest of growths — Phoebe. Phoebe. Don’t say her name out loud, Hermione. Keep Phoebe Fayne out of it. It was you who were wrong drifting into this, tired and having no proper place to go to and it was better (far better) for Phoebe to have that officers’ wives’ home (what a cheat) in the country to go to for a few months until you could arrange, Beryl arranging it, Lady de Rothfeldt so kindly arranging it, officer’s wife. . pneumonia, very ill, husband only just returned but a cheat. A cheat. Husbands didn’t return like this with a bit of a uniform, his old tunic with a dash somewhere of a bit of ribbon as a smoking jacket. Jerrold was all in bits, trousers and jacket didn’t go together, Jerrold was all in bits. “I will look after you,” and “now register it as Vane’s,” didn’t go together. Jerrold was a Minotaur and there was only one thing now to do about it. Dodge him.
“I’m just waiting. Was just waiting. They said I must be careful. I’m going out to-morrow. I have to go to Richmond. You have to register them in the district where they were born — Richmond.” “See that you do then. See that you do then. It’ll be evidence to divorce you. .” Divorce? Was she hearing, seeing? She was mad simply. This word that they had none of them used (Vane had so suavely brushed it) was brought out in a fervour of brutality against her. “Divorce
“But what about you? What about—?” “O well — that — you can’t
Nothing in him that doth fade but doth suffer — but doth suffer — suffer — suffer — sea-change. You suffer toward sea-change but there was an end to legitimate suffering, this suffering of Hermione’s was illegitimate. You don’t take more than your share of suffering any more than you take more than your share of happiness — wheels within wheels — the labyrinth but Theseus (was it?) had the clue, walked straight on, straight on, labyrinth of London upon London and the war, black abysses of pockets of blackness into which you wander feeling the crash of a plane, sensing, feeling the blue body crumpled — an American fighting for France or the brave fawn-coloured young body ground — ground — don’t think. Labyrinth. How marvellous to be of it, in it, one of them, one of the Athenian youths and maidens sent — sent — Athenians. Hermione stared at the wall, waiting for an answer for the wall was mustard coloured and the map that she had pinned there now some days ago, a map fallen from one of the Weeklies now became something other, somewhere else, another pocket, another world. “That map’s rotten — cut up into Balkan states and all wrong.” Map pinned to the wall, sketched in map from London Weekly that she hadn’t thrown away, had pinned on the wall, map of the Balkans, difficulties, marked off in dark lines, cut into dark thick lines, political, meaning nothing, but a map from a modern weekly (last week’s?) and the problem of the Balkans and the map was nothing but it covered a space of the mustard paper and the map was a map of Greece, all distorted by political black lines and dotted lines, the sort of map, you remember we had with our weeklies in that odd spring, never to come again, mist like a bride’s veil over Soho, and she would talk of the map, thus dodging the Minotaur, thus dodging Darrington. She would pretend not to have heard Darrington, would go on talking as if the registering, deliberately of Phoebe as illegitimate was nothing, could be nothing, though she was Mrs. Jerrold Darrington and how difficult to explain, “you see I am married but this is someone else’s child.” But Darrington was mad. The whole thing was impossible, all the letters, he was mad, shell-shock, dissociation (she must make excuses for him) but it was wrong, Hermione knew it was wrong. Hermione had had her share of suffering and if she took more than her share of suffering the world would topple over for you can’t arrogate virtue to yourself, you can’t suffer more than Christ — and she had suffered. Dead, resurrected but she had come to the wrong place. She belonged in heaven after Phoebe — and she wasn’t in heaven. Heaven had been open to her and she had walked straight into Purgatory or Hell even, this hell of Darrington cowering over her, a little now cringing to her. This was worse than his bullyings. He was cringing to her. What had happened? What had Louise done? Drugs, sleep — evil — drinks — the wrong kind — abuses — turned his head — come back — he was so nice a week ago. It had all happened in a few days. Turned into a monster, a Minotaur when Hermione had thought he was one of the youths of Athens, he, as she, lost alike in a labyrinth, alike in the end to be saved, but he wasn’t to be saved — Astraea — how dared he call her that. He was mad obviously. Astraea was a name that went with al fresco suppers and the odd pear tree that had plumed itself so extravagantly like a white swan against the upflung hills of Ana-Capri. Astraea was shining over Amalfi and Astraea was the very heart of the orange flowers, golden with that tight whirl of still smooth petals, texture of the orange flowers so much more ivory smooth than any camellia even, even than the wax smooth and ivory stiff gardenia. Elegant. Things of the senses beyond the drift of people and the stuffiness of trains and the Italians with too many children — that remained apart and untouched (then) in grubby cheap little bed-rooms, in bed-rooms on the rue gauche that were youth — youth — simply.
“The map is rotten.” It was Darrington again saying it. And now the map took form before Hermione’s dazed eyelids. Her eyes seemed to see nothing. Were open, staring like glass eyes, saw nothing, grey glass eyes, but her eyelids seemed pricked with luminous light, seemed to burn, to glow with some light within—
15
Penal servitude had her by the throat, drove her on. The flurry of snow was ash that spring (do you remember?) and penal servitude had her by the raw edge of her skirt, dragged at her underclothes, grasped up like a slimy hand from fetid water, Dickens, all the horrible things one read about, in London, come true, London come true, Dickens’ London, “my lords and gentlemen” but I thought we had gone on, gone on. They always screamed that they had done away with Victorian things, in London. Grey ash drifted against a grey ash face lifted to grey ash drifting. Penal servitude had her by the hem of the skirt so that she stumbled heavily climbing up the bus steps and the curved steps of the swaying bus (that she used to run up blithely) were the steps of a lighthouse that swayed and swayed. A sort of lighthouse built on a sort of bell-buoy sort of thing, swaying like a bell buoy in a storm when the bell rings and rings. Once in Venice there had been a summer mist and the bell buoys were set loose. . and bells sounded across Venice as they sounded now in London. Penal servitude. All the bells of London sounded penal servitude for if you have a husband who is an officer and a gentleman he comes back. . and screams why did you, why did you, like a clock ticking, like a heart beating. . penal servitude. Captain Darrington. Yes. I am Mrs. Darrington. Penal servitude made Hermione one now with the faces that loomed up out of white ash out of mist of snow and snow of mist, looking up at her from the circle of Piccadilly. Daffodils shone like suns through cold mist. Penal servitude was daffodils in Piccadilly. .
“Poor, poor thing.” “Yes. . Delia!” “But what a dreadful experience for you my dear. Did you say it was her sister?” “Yes, her sister.” “But you my dear. . with Jerrold just back. What a dreadful sordid little thing to have to happen to you.” “Well. . no. . you see her husband was in the army.” “Yes. But even so. Esprit de corps is all right. But you my darling. After your own terrible experience.” “I only wanted to make sure Delia, before I told poor little Winnie what to tell her sister. . after all, I know nothing of the law (why should I?) if it
To walk carefully because the paving stones were egg-shell, to walk carefully so as not to put down a foot, down a foot too heavily. To walk carefully toward something that was something that was something. . another bus. . to Richmond. . with the same flurry in her face and streets, people, people, people, streets and I am one now with every felon, with every thief, with every Whitechapel beggar who reached out toward a baker’s basket for we knew how tempting (do you remember?) the butt end of a brown loaf could look sticking from a basket. I am one with felons, with thieves, with “sick and in prison and ye visited me.” Sick and in prison, I was visited, Delia was an angel. There are everywhere angels. It started with that bracelet clasp that day I met Vane at Lechstein’s studio. A bracelet to clasp my wrist, to say there was something behind the mist, beneath, beneath are the everlasting, everlasting. . “come in, Mrs. Darrington.” “I hate to trouble you. Yes, I did manage to get Phoebe’s registration through this morning. So impressive. . Phoebe Darrington. I must just look at Phoebe.” “Phoebe is doing herself very well these mornings. She
Downstairs it was “such shocking trouble with the furniture van people. . all their old officials and these new ex-service men. . but they will do the moving sometime. In the meanwhile (O it is such a disappointment to us)
Those people, said Hermione to Hermione, don’t know what they have done. Sick and in prison and ye visited me. For if they had said “take the little girl, we have no room for the little girl” it would have been walking on and walking on in the snow, with snow and petals drifting and walking on and walking on in the snow. It would be like the worst, the very worst imaginable melodrama, Way Down East, or something that here they call East Lynne. Don’t people see since the war, in the war, that Way Down East and East Lynne was true, are the only truth? And beggars saying, “kind lady for Gawd’s sake, a penny,”—are the truth and things like Jean Jean sent to prison and taking a loaf of bread because he or someone else was starving are the truth? Dickens with “my lords and gentlemen” and “dead my lords and gentlemen” is the truth for how could you go on? How could you go on? You would have had a baby in your arms and stumbled. . and there is always a river. Melodrama is so awfully funny. . so terribly funny. Here I am sitting on the top of a bus and it might be anywhere with light snow drifting and little pink almonds all along the fronts of brick houses and behind rusty laurel hedges putting out pink fingers. . Eos the dawn. Eros. Someone, somewhere makes me think of Eros.
“Yes. More tea.” Don’t you see that if you go on having tea, then having a wash and changing, everything comes right? In Soho there was no point in ever changing. . “I would like to stay here.” Rugs under her feet shot up convolvulus tendrils. An atrocious statue in a corner put forth white hands, said “come unto me all ye that are weary.” A footman passed across convolvulus and did not trample out the fronds of blue and hyacinth blue and delft blue and rainbow blue and Canterbury bell blue. Eyes that were as blue as any blue looked at her. “I mean. . I will stay. I’ll send back to to. . to the hotel we stayed in for a few clothes. I’d like to stay here with you. Does it suit to stay here with you?” “Mama is away. Jacko is away with mama. I am alone. You can have the little room next my room. .” then in an agony lest life should slip, lest the footman should step through the bluest of blue convolvulus blue that was the very blue of Bokhara, lest the tray should slip and the little cakes should fall onto the carpet and melt the carpet that was ice that was a film of pure ice, lest the legs and tables and legs of tables should slip and jumble together. . Hermione held on to something. Hermione held on to this thing. I will wait till the other footman takes the cakes in little baskets (both look thin, both must be “invalided out”). I will wait as they are thin and invalided out and I am thin and invalided out. I will wait as there is esprit de corps between me and the other footman, until the other footman has gone. He has gone. “Has he gone?” “Gone?” “The other footman?” “Yes. Did you want something?” “Yes. I wanted to say this.” Fumes of amber tea melted with fumes of convolvulus blue fragrance. The room was chill with a fire burning at the far, far end, like the far, far blaze of a star, Aldebaran, some Eastern great star or Nineveh so simple. “I want to tell you.” “Yes.” “I make a bargain with you. If you promise never more to say that you will kill yourself, I’m going to give you something. If you promise and promise that you won’t any more smuggle in those frightful and dangerous. . things. . I’m going to ask you something. I want to make a bargain with you.” “Yes.” “I want to tell you something. Can you bear me to tell you something?” “Yes.” “The little girl is not my husband’s little girl. . do you understand these things?” “I
Appendix
Like Huxley’s
The following is a list of the characters of
A few characters in the novel seem to lack clearly identifiable historical counterparts, either because H.D. meant them to be typical (or perhaps composite) rather than referential or because information that might lead to their unmasking has not yet turned up. These characters are omitted here. A few identifications are tentative, and I have indicated this where appropriate.
H.D. herself provided biographical keys to some of her novels: the typescript of
I would like to acknowledge here the generous assistance of Louis H. Silverstein, who provided essential information for many of the following biographies. I also wish to thank Charles Timbrell and Caroline Zilboorg.
It should be noted that certain aspects of “Merry Dalton” do not seem to correspond to Patmore, even though Merry is an early version of Morgan, the Patmore figure in H.D.’s
The mention of a “Miss Thornton” (1.11), president of “Lyn Mawr” when Hermione was there, presumably alludes to Martha Carey Thomas, president of Bryn Mawr during H.D.’s enrollment. This Miss Thornton should not be confused with Shirley Thornton.
Barbara Guest claims, however, that H.D. and Frances Gregg were “introduced by Nan Hoyt, a mutual friend. Hoyt appears in