Herma

by MacDonald Harris

  A moment later she felt the other hand lifted from hers in the dark. She went on singing, a little disappointed. But Mr. Koenig had only taken away his hand to lift the needle from the Victrola record. The soprano and the orchestra were cut off, and there was only Herma’s own thin and fluted voice working its way through the Puccini harmonies. She watched the screen, synchronizing her singing exactly to the movements of Madame Melba’s lips. Prom time to time she darted a quick glance at Mr. Koenig; she could see his face outlined in the dim reflection from the screen. He was watching the screen intently, with an occasional glance at his machine to see if it was running properly. He seemed to have forgotten she was there, or perhaps he was embarrassed over having touched her hand. “Altro di me,” she concluded on a clear and lingering D natural, “non le saprei narrare.”

  It was the end of the aria. Mr. Koenig, reaching to the Victrola, lowered the needle into the groove again at the exact place to rejoin the orchestra and the figures on the screen. Herma smiled to herself. She liked shy, gentle men who knew how to do things; she liked them because they knew how to do things, and because they were shy. The orchestra resumed its tinny imitation of Puccini’s chords, and Rodolfo and Mimì embarked into the “Soave Fanciulla” duet. But Herma didn’t join in with the Victrola anymore, and Mr. Koenig’s hand didn’t touch hers again in the darkness. The two voices blended together in the last strains of the ecstatic love duet. Then the last of the film flapped its way out of the projector.

  She turned to watch Mr. Koenig deftly changing reels and lowering the needle into the groove again. Now it was the turn of Mozart. It was quite a different matter from the tawdry Paris attic. The setting was a magnificent palace in the baroque style, with rich hangings and elaborate bric-a-brac. Ladies and gentlemen in eighteenth-century costumes stood about singing with their hands on their hearts. Figaro sang his “Se vuol ballare” with great sarcasm, grimacing with narrowed lips out of the screen. The Count and Countess quarreled. People changed costumes, disguised themselves, and fell in and out of love from one aria to another. It was very elegant, Herma was fascinated by the graceful and girlish figure of Cherubino, in his tight-fitting breeches and his embroidered coat which swelled a little in the front. He had a short wig, well-fitting white stockings, and slippers with buckles. He took the coat off, however, to sing his Canzonetta, which Herma knew by heart as soon as she had heard it once. The pretty page begged the ladies to tell him what love was.

  “Voi che sapete

  che cosa è amor,

  donne, vedete,

  s’io l’ho nel cor.”

  The ladies evidently knew a good deal about the matter and offered him a number of suggestions. Herma now recognized Cherubino as the same Nellie Melba who had sung Mimì. But how transformed in her tight-fitting breeches and wig! It was difficult to make very much sense out of the plot from only twenty minutes of imbroglios and arias. But evidently everything came out all right, Susanna and Figaro were reunited, and the Count begged his wife’s forgiveness (“Contessa, perdono!”). Once again the end of the film flapped through the projector and the small theater turned white.

  Herma stood up. Mr. Koenig was busy subduing the sputtering arc lamp. When it went out the theater was left in a kind of crepuscular half light. Mr. Koenig set the extinguished lamp on the table.

  “Was my little hand cold?” she inquired with only a faint malice.

  He didn’t respond to this. He only colored a little. He cleared his throat and said nothing for five seconds or so. Then he said, “I wonder if I might proffer an invitation. If it is inappropriate, please say so and pardon the importunity.”

  Herma smiled. She wondered if he would ever be able to extricate himself from this elaborate language and speak to her naturally.

  “Proffer?”

  “Yes, proffer.” He blushed again.

  “What sort of invitation?”

  Another pause. She waited gravely for him to speak.

  “I have a small motorcar, and I thought we might perhaps take a spin around town. Or somewhere else,” he added, as she went on looking at him with her slightly unsettling composure.

  When she didn’t answer he led the way out the rear door of the theater and into the alley. There, in an open shed, was standing a vehicle that looked something like a small buggy without any shafts for the horse. It had a certain elegance about it. The seats were of quilted leather; the body was polished mahogany, and there was a single acetylene headlamp in front.

  “A Waverley Electromobile,” he said.

  “But where’s the motor?”

  He pointed out a kind of metal box on the rear axle.

  “The motor is very small. The batteries are in a box at the rear. As you see, there’s a rheostat by the operator’s hand to control the electric current. The motor delivers five horsepower, which gives a road speed of from three to sixteen miles an hour.”

  Herma understood nothing of this, but went on looking pleasant.

  “How far will it go before …”

  “Before the batteries are exhausted? Twenty or more miles.”

  It occurred to Herma that “a spin through town” might not be such a good idea, since Brother Goff or even Papa might happen to be out on Fourth Street and see them whirring silently by. It was not that there was anything improper about being with Mr. Koenig, but—Papa didn’t approve of motorcars.

  “Then will it go as far as the beach?”

  He reflected for a moment. But he seemed to be reflecting not so much about the capabilities of his machine as about Herma. He gazed at her with a certain air of surmise. After a moment he said, “Of course.”

  They both smiled again. After another slightly awkward hesitation he handed her into the left side of the machine, where there was a little brass step for the foot. Then he got in on the other side and began fussing with the various levers and controls. There was a hum and the Waverley began moving backward. Once out of the shed he turned the rheostat the other way and they slipped smoothly forward, down to the end of the alley and out onto Main Street. In a few moments they were out of town on the country road to the beach.

  The thing was steered with a tiller like a boat. Mr. Koenig kept one hand on the tiller and the other on the rheostat, which he adjusted when the Waverley mounted a slight rise or slowed to pass around a hay wagon. He seemed intent on his driving and kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead, without turning to look at Herma at his side.

  It was a little after five. The sun had just set and a clear and warm, grayish air flowed over them as they rode along. The Waverley was so quiet that Herma could hear insects buzzing in the fields as they passed. She glanced at Mr. Koenig. In the transparent light of the dusk she was able to examine him carefully for the first time. There was a classic fineness about his profile. The brow was large, the other features even and symmetrical. His fine, rather sparse hair was the color of wheat, and it was exactly matched by the eyebrows and by the mustaches that drooped slightly at the corners. Although she hadn’t noticed it before, he had put on a leather motorist’s cap with a visor as he came out of the theater.

  Although he kept his eyes fixed on the road he seemed aware that she was looking at him. “The tires are solid rubber so there’s no danger of a flat,” he said without turning his head. “The brakes are an improved kind, worked by friction pads pressed to the rear axle.”

  “It’s a lovely motorcar.”

  “We’re now going at about fifteen miles an hour. I don’t have a speedometer, but I plan to have one installed.”

  This was his notion of how to make conversation with a young woman. However, like all conversations between two young people who are alone for the first time—like the duet between Rodolfo and Mimì—it had the air of really being about something else. Herma felt pleased with herself. They had passed the sugar factory and Angel Town now and were running along the road parallel to the beach. Ahead the spidery legs of McFadden Wharf stuck out into the ocean, and the houses of Newport an
d East Newport went by. Then, so quickly that Herma was hardly aware of where they were, they came to the short cross street with the beach at one end of it and the Pavilion at the other. Mr. Koenig turned into the street and parked his machine at the side.

  “Shall we get out?”

  She smiled, and he came around to her side and handed her out onto the wooden sidewalk.

  He seemed uncertain. He looked about him, up and down the street with its three hotels and the Pavilion at the end. Some of the windows in the hotels were already lighted. In the gray twilight air everything seemed altered and slightly enchanted.

  “What would you like to do now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We could go for a walk.”

  Herma took thought and decided to be daring. “What I’ve always wanted to do,” she told him, “is dine at the Pavilion.”

  At this he looked alarmed. “I believe it’s quite expensive.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  He cleared his throat. “It’s a little embarrassing. You see, if I had anticipated it, it would be a pleasure … But the fact is, at the moment I don’t have enough with me.”

  “Well, I have.”

  “But I couldn’t possibly—”

  “Yes, you could. Anyhow,” she pointed out blithely, “you didn’t charge me for a ticket at the theater. So we’re friends, aren’t we?” She added playfully, “They always say it’s the woman who pays.”

  “I don’t think they quite mean that.”

  Still, he allowed himself to be led down the sidewalk past the hotels to the large blue and gray building with the cupola on the top. Around the line of the roof, high in the air, a row of electric bulbs shone like a magic necklace. She slipped her hand into Mr. Koenig’s elbow. He didn’t seem to notice.

  A broad stairway at the center led upstairs to the dance hall. They walked around this and into the restaurant. Inside the enameled double doors a maître d’hôtel of great dignity was waiting, in a white jacket with gilding on his sleeves like an admiral. He showed them to the table by the window, and they were seated.

  The large room overlooking the Bay was decorated in white enamel boiseries with gilded trim. The chairs were in wine-colored velvet, and the tables glittered with white linen and silver. On the walls were bracket lamps in the forms of arms in classic drapery. Each arm held out a candelabrum of small, dimly glowing Edison bulbs. The filaments shimmered slightly, lending the room and everything in it an insubstantial or fairytale quality. In the distance a few lights shone on the other side of the Bay, sending broken beams to play on the black surface of the water.

  Mr. Koenig was provided with a menu. He studied it for some time, and then inquired politely whether she cared for Poulet Reine Margot. Since he gave the impression that he perhaps didn’t know what this was himself, she helped him out by remarking, “Yes, I’m very fond of chicken.” He did know, however, that white wine went with fowl, and ordered a Moselle, which came in a silver bucket so cold it was veiled with frost.

  At the sight of the bottle with its foreign label—she had never drunk wine in her life—a sudden thought struck her. “Excuse me,” she said. Setting her napkin aside, she got up demurely and went to the maître d’ standing at his post by the door.

  “Is there a telephone?”

  “Of course.” With a bow he pointed down the corridor in the direction of the kitchen. There she found the telephone mounted on the wall, with a white enameled plate giving instructions for operating it. She picked up the receiver and held it to her ear.

  “Number please.”

  “Santa Ana 131.”

  The telephone at home had been installed only a month or so before. Papa was not yet home from the Blade, and it was Mama who answered. She was still uncertain with the apparatus, and her voice came through only thinly and as though weakened by the distance.

  “I’ve just had my lesson with Mrs. Opdike,” said Herma, “and she’s asked me to stay to supper.”

  “I see. Well, that’s nice,” said Mama vaguely. Then, thinking further, she said, “But Mrs. Opdike doesn’t have a telephone.”

  “I’m calling from Q. R. Smith’s,” said Herma, plunging further into the lie.

  “Well, that’s fine, dear. Have a nice time, and be sure to offer to help Mrs. Opdike with the dishes.”

  Herma hung up the apparatus, feeling a little feverish. What would happen to girls like her, who went off on escapades with young men, and told lies to their mothers? Never mind; Mr. Koenig was a perfect gentleman, and the Pavilion was innocent enough. It wasn’t as though it were something like Cantamar. Men! She made a little moue of disgust to herself. But Mr. Koenig, she was sure, would never go near such a place.

  The dinner was a great success. They had a demitasse afterwards. When they had finished the tiny cups of coffee Mr. Koenig didn’t get up. He sat there as though he were wrestling with a great moral problem which he wished to conceal from her. Herma saw that what afflicted him was the bill for the dinner, which was lying in a saucer on the table between them. As though it were the most natural thing in the world she reached into her purse and set a five-dollar bill in the saucer.

  “I really …”

  “No, I really.”

  With the wine inside her she was in excellent spirits and slightly audacious. The waiter, passing the table, spirited away the saucer and brought it back with the change. Mr. Koenig, after a moment’s hesitation, left a quarter in the saucer. Then he pocketed the rest of the coins and they left.

  Out on the sidewalk they had a friendly argument—he attempting to hand her back the money, and she refusing and pressing it back on him. Finally she stuck it in his coat pocket, her fingers as they came out brushing against the lean and pointed bone of his hip.

  “Thank you for the dinner, Mr. Koenig,” she said gravely.

  “I wish you’d call me Earl.”

  “All right, Earl.”

  Their eyes met. With difficulty Herma suppressed a smile. He glanced around for possible spectators. Then, as they went on down the wooden sidewalk, his hand came out in the darkness and enclosed her fingers.

  They passed the Netherlands Apartments and the Hotel Balboa with their lighted windows. Herma wondered what she would do if he invited her to go into one of the hotels. She hardly knew what she would have responded. But he seemed to have nothing of the sort in mind, or if he did he subdued the thought firmly. In fact, once they got back to the parked Waverley, he seemed more intent on his machine than on her, although perhaps this was only to cover his awkwardness. He pushed the tiller to one side, maneuvered out of the parking place, and then turned up the rheostat so that the Waverley glided off smoothly down the beach road back toward town.

  When they reached Newport, however, he slowed.

  “Perhaps you’d care for a little walk before we go back?”

  “That would be lovely.”

  They got out. This was Old Newport, so called because it was the first town on the Peninsula, even though it had been built only about twenty years before: a small community of tents and wooden buildings clustered around the foot of McFadden’s Wharf. They crossed the tiny square lined with storefronts. Everything was pitch dark. Across the square was the wharf with a double row of railroad tracks running out into it. Holding hands, they made their way along the tracks in the dark. There was a subdued crashing from the surf underneath. Far out ahead, at the end of the wharf, was a single white light.

  Then the surf was behind them, and it was quiet. There was only the subdued murmur of the breeze, raising the ribbons on Herma’s dress. The sea was black, almost invisible, only a wavelet flashing white here and there. A schooner from Oregon was tied at the wharf, but it was dark and there was nobody aboard. They continued slowly on past it.

  Earl had taken her hand again in the darkness. Each time he did this absently, as though he were hardly noticing what he was doing, and when they came to a difficult place where they had to climb over the tracks he would
release it again. It was a curious sensation. Something warm and sensuous flowed up Herma’s hand and into her body, like a little current that was broken when the fingers separated. Once, when he seemed uncertain, she reached out for the other hand herself.

  The wharf stretched far out onto the sea; it was, as Earl informed her with his command of figures, a quarter of a mile long, sixty feet broad at the end, and nineteen feet above the water. At the end there was a wooden post with a cross-brace at the top and a wire dangling from it. Suspended from the wire was a single large bulb the size of a fruit jar. A cloud of moths and other small insects bumped against the glass. The bulb swung slightly in the breeze, so that the white circle of light under it drifted and wandered on the planks.

  They stopped exactly under the light. In the slightly rocking white glare they could see nothing of the shore; it was as though they were on a ship far out at sea. There was the sound of water washing gently underneath. Earl still held her hand. Then he turned toward her, taking her other hand too. She saw his serious face half in shadow from the light flooding down over it. It was a magic moment. A great romantic breeze blew through her, suffusing her blood with an excitement that was at the same time a quiet joy. She waited for him to make some sort of declaration or speak of his feelings. But Earl didn’t seem to be romantic at all; instead he seemed to be struggling in the grip of a powerful animal urge. He wished to subdue this beastly part of him, and probably would, but only after great effort.

  “Herma!”

  “Earl …”

  Evidently he took this first word as a question and the second as an answer, because he gripped her by the shoulders and kissed her fiercely. Herma moved forward and her body joined with his. The beast was there all right; it was even harder than his hipbone. An electric tingle, similar to the one produced by hand-holding but greater in intensity, passed from his lips to hers. When she allowed her lips to part, however, he broke away abruptly.