Asphodel

by H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)

  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 Dalton woman here.” Who was the Dalton woman? Someone crowding through chairs, making herself very thin though she was thin enough in all consciousness. There was the Dalton woman and even Walter paused, his two hands poised and then began an ironic little run up and down, up and down as much as to say, “you fiend, you fiend woman, you have driven me mad, now listen.” Walter was running up and down, up and down. People were frightened but still the Dalton woman held the audience. The Dalton woman and Walter. But Walter won. The Dalton woman with a frisson (she would have said a frisson) sank into half the end of a Chesterfield that was pulled out at an odd angle and everyone began again to breathe. But Walter was standing. Walter was looking at the Dalton woman.

  “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 dropped in the middle of the Après Midi d’un Faune. It was no après midi for poor frazzled Lydia. Her lion lept and roared and finally departed.” “Sh-uuh—”

  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 wash your ears. You’re always forgetting your ears. Eugenia. Would Eugenia like this music? She liked Bach. If you called Bach music then this was nothing at all. It wasn’t anything. Only water, bubbling, bubbling, running, running. Water. She was the thing it flowed toward. Hermione was the impersonal thing it flowed toward. Walter was tired, his great head hung heavy on his heavy young body. The great head that was the stricken head of a wounded Hermes hung down, heavy; faster, faster, the hands were heavy, solid. How could water flow so simply from hands that were so solid? On. On. On. He had asked her to come to Delia’s (though Delia had asked her anyway) so that he wouldn’t too much hate the people. People. Hating people. Where was this taking her? “I would like to have a little knife, a sharp little knife. And I would like to turn and turn and turn that knife in Dowel’s heart. Really. I’d like to do that and say so simply, now you feel.” Who was saying that? O who dared say that? This is how people hated Walter. Really, really hated Walter. Who dared, who dared say that of Walter? A face was leaning toward another face, a thin highly tinted fox-shaped face with puffs of fox-coloured hair and a red mouth that made a scar and a blatant tint of red on that mouth that seemed purposely to clash with the hair colour. Who so dared speak? A face was leaning over the back of a Chesterfield and was opening tinted lips to someone who was “shuuhing” at it, “he’s going on. For God’s sake don’t be funny.”

  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 not—” “Well it ought to be. And what became of Dizzy’s dance partner?” “You mean Clara?” How funny. Clara. But that wasn’t her Clara. Not her Clara. Poor Clara. Would Clara have liked this? George said she couldn’t bring them both. He said one or the other and there had been a quarrel at the last and Fay had been half dressed and Hermione had said they mustn’t be late and Fayne had jerked at the dark blue crêpe de chine thing she and Clara had spent the whole afternoon sewing on and pulled out the whole sleeve. “Wait Pau-ul. I can sew it on you.” But Fay had jerked it and pulled the thing leaving a slash on her shoulder. Poor lovely, beautiful, sulky misplaced Fayne Rabb. Fayne was so lovely, lovelier than all this if she would only let herself be. She wouldn’t let herself, let an
yone be lovely. Not lovely as flowers are. As flowers must always be. She wanted things in her own way, pulled and tore, “but you—must—feel.” “But I don’t. I don’t, not your way. In my own way. O if you only knew how it went on and on and on. As if a whole book on one single page (like ancient papyrus) rolled on and on.” We are here. We are there. We will go mad being here and there unless we give up simply, stay here and are lost, stay there and are dead. To be here and there at the same time, that is the triumph. Walter was doing that, had been doing that. “O Dowel. Excellent fellow. Starts the ghosts quivering from somewhere in Heine’s inferno.” “Heine’s inferno?” “Damn, Celandine. I never was one of you élite lettrée—” “My name’s not—” “Well, it should be.” Flowers. Talk. How odd, how witty they all were. How could they be so perfect, all made up out of a play? Even Walter didn’t see that, how lovely they were, all these people. The people took on a sudden loveliness. Was it because she was thinking of Fayne Rabb? O Fay you should have been here. “Cela—” “O don’t—call me—that.” “What does he call you, Di?” “The brute calls me—Cel—an—dine.” “O—ho. Ho.” That isn’t how people laugh. But how write how people laugh? It is a shivering, a quivering. It’s a letting go. And how delicious. She was letting go, this utterly adorable thin thing in a green gown whose hair was coming down—“Violet.” “Who’s calling me Violet?” “It’s pom-pom over there. She’s lost twenty stone since you last saw her.” “O pom—”

  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 millions.”

  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 now?” “But everyone is going—gone. And what is there to stay for?” “O just like you. Just like you all. Can’t you see I’m tired to death. Stay Dryad.” “Dryad, Delia?” “Yes. George says so. He says no one with any sense of humour could call you Hermione, Her Gart. He’s really rather proud of you. He says we’re all insane and he hopes you spite us.” “Spite you, Delia?” “He says you can, will if were not respectful. He has the greatest admiration for your—power.” “Power? He’s been telling me all along that my clothes look wrong, a mast and a mizzen head.” “A—a—what?” “He calls me to be exact, I don’t know what—a mast—and—a—mizzen head.” “What is?” “What is what?” “A mizzen—ha, ha, ho.” But that isn’t how people laugh. Delia sank in the empty Chesterfield, laughing, surveying the wreck of her drawing room. Feathers, pomade boxes. “One feels one should find snuffboxes people lost.” “Wh-aaat?” “It’s all like a play. It doesn’t seem real, not this room—not anything that has happened. I love all the people—” “Which, Dryad, especially?” But she wasn’t going to tell Delia. It would get quoted around and back again. They were using her as their latest little pet oracle, something odd, exotic. She wasn’t having any. “I don’t know” (she spoke at random) “that Dalton woman.” “Mary?” “How could her name be Mary? Her name isn’t, can’t be Mary.” “Why not dear? Why can’t it just be. Mary means—” “O that means the mother of—mother of—” “She has two.” “What?” But this was impossible. What did Delia mean by it? It was another of their cutting cynicisms. The Dalton woman with a fox shaped little face and enormous earrings leaning over the back of the Chesterfield, saying, “I would like to have a little knife. I would like to turn and turn and turn it in the heart of Dowel. I would like to say to Dowel now you feel” The Dalton woman. God. Perhaps (was it possible?) she had meant it.

  “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 needn’t—” “What dear?” “I mean Lillian seemed to want them but could that Dalton woman ever—” “What? What? What?” Light coming on. Someone mysterious in the hall, lighting something. Light was creeping from the hall toward the larkspur coloured woven carpet. The carpet had the oddest of lovely shades, pot-pourri rose-colour, blue of blue and dark-blue larkspur. “The carpet is like woven petals, yet somehow right—a carpet.” “Bokhara.” “Bokhara. Sounds like wine coloured—petunias—” no not petunias—a hat—jade hair pins. The light was coming nearer. “Will you have the light milady,” this is what George called back-stairs, “or do you prefer the shadows.” The shadows? Henry James. Did footmen talk like that? “Go away.” He had gone away. “Poor Dickson. He listens to our conversation. To improve his—” “Improve his?” “Darling Dryad, don’t begin spoiling yourself by being witty. Yes. He listens. I can remember the exact inflection of poor Mary, it was only last week saying, ‘don’t, don’t let’s have the lights on Delia, I prefer the shadows.’ ”

  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 why Delia asked the Dalton to meet you, Dryad?” “I
don’t know. It happened. The Dalton (her name is Mary) wrote Delia saying she was so unhappy—” “Again?” “Again? What do you mean again?” “I mean that Dryad. Why the Dalton?” “I told you George. She’d been writing Delia.” “O well, I suppose the most discreet must have their indiscretions. The Dalton’s dippy. Otherwise amusing.” “Dippy?” “Her husband it appears tries spasmodically to lock her up. Bug house you know. Mad.” “Is the Dalton crazy?” “Well not any more apparently than the rest of them. She’s a little cleverer that’s all. When a woman in that set, is clever (brilliantly clever) the husbands take quick action.” “Whatever do you mean, George?” “She writes. I mean doesn’t. She could if she wanted to. She’s afraid of dear Freddie or Teddie or Algy. (Morris I think his name is.) She’s afraid if she gets any further forwarder, he will descend and cop her.” “George. You’re so crazy. Yourself. Can’t you tell me?” “I am. I have been.” “Delia says—” “Never mind what Delia says. What do you think?”

  “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 now you feel.” “Rather neat that. Old Forgeron makes one angry.” “You angry?” “O well not angry, Dryad. Helpless.” “Helpless?” “Well not so much helpless as hopeless. Abandon hope all ye who enter here. The cold irradiance of the well-cut glacier.” “Well-cut?” “Yes. Perfectly tailored. The glacier à la mode.” “I suppose that’s funny. The sort of thing all you people repeat to one another. It is rather.” “Thank you, Dryad. But I started saying I don’t like your friends.” “But who George? And why don’t you?” “I mean her Dryad. The She of the piece. She’s done things to you. You’re not the same. Altered imperceptibly. Not to notice. But I notice.” “Wh-aat, George?” “You and she would have been burned in Salem for witches—” “O George, George, you said that long ago . . . and that was why everything happened. Don’t go on saying it.” “Burnt.” “You shouldn’t have—you shouldn’t have. You should never have said that, George Lowndes. You might have helped her.” “Help her, Gawd Almighty—Orpheus or (who was it?) Orestes rends assistance to the Furies. She has a face like a Burne Jones fury. Have you seen them? In one of your eternal galleries. Not the Tate. I think the South Kensington—” “Yes. I’ve been there.” “Where haven’t you been Dryad?” “I don’t—know George.” “Dryad. Piqued again. Or peeved merely?” “I don’t know, George. I hoped you’d—help even now, you might help Fayne Rabb.”