Asphodel

by H. D. (Hilda Doolittle)

  “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-cu-lation.” George was speaking in poor Bertrand’s sustained and careful utterance. But only Hermione would know this. George was being pleasant, charming. One could see that. “I think our rag will do the sonnet series, Darrington.” The other person had scrambled to his feet and offered George the twin pouffe (due deference to the Lyre’s sub-editor) beside Hermione. Hermione only just thought to look at the other person, whose voice was (had been from the first) so oddly vibrant. He flung back from his shoulders as he answered the summons of someone shaking (at him) a gilt brocade bag across the room, “ask Her.” “Darrington, you know Hermione, don’t you?” “O very well. Yes. For a long time.” “Where? When? At Prescott’s we may gather.” “Further than that. It was well say about B.C. 325 (pre fifth anyhow) in Thessaly. Maybe Tempe.”

  “Then you know Darrington?” “Yes, I think so.” “You can’t think you know a person. You know or don’t know. Do you know him?” “I told you, George, yes. I said I think so.” “You met him at Delia’s, at one of her eternal functions. You should have told me.” “Why should I have told you, Georgio, I’d met Darrington?” “Well for one thing I was giving myself the express pleasure of—presenting you. I suppose your Philadelphia Book of Etiquette would state it that way.” “Why worry so about me? I knew all along.” (She didn’t know why she was telling these lies.) “I’m sorry you were disappointed in it.” “O Darrington. I say there Darrington.” George evidently wanted corroboration of these statements. He put his two fingers to his mouth and whistled. Candles seemed to waver, to break, to fall sideways. A bunch of winter-daffodils seemed to come to life, to light the whole room with the glow that had till now been utterly disregarded. “I didn’t see there were daffodils in that glass bowl in the corner.” “There were people crowding about, Dryad. Someone should have told you.” She ignored his irony lost in admiration of the whistle that didn’t seem to make any difference to anybody. Most of the party had gone. The hardy representatives still lingering were evidently used to George Lowndes’ vagaries. “Don’t take any notice. He’s always doing these things. The way really to annoy him is to pretend not to notice.” A voice near Hermione, someone near the bowl of daffodils. She turned to watch this subtle analyst of George’s character. George was about to lift his Pan fingers to his Pan mouth (he affected a slight whisp of grape-gold beard in those days but you would hardly notice) when hands descended. Someone’s hands descended from near the daffodils, courageous little hands, fingers like thin wires, small hands really. Hands closed over George’s mouth. A slim elegant shape crowded into the divan between Hermione and George Lowndes. This was just a little casual of it also, “George darling.” George had removed the hands from his mouth and was gallantly in his best Provincial manner kissing them. Backs of small hands. Yes, George did it nicely.

  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 that poem.” “Why Princess Lointaine?” “Well you told me, didn’t you, it was written for—me?” “Did I? Maybe. But you see I tell everybody that.” “O George. Shockingly inadequate. If you are being cutting, be cutting.” “I leave that for you, Maria della Trinità.” “Trinità? Why exactly?” “You are, aren’t you, obviously the World, the Flesh and the—” “Spirit, put it George.” Someone had descended. It was the voice that had some time ago enthralled Hermione. The whistle had produced, like Aladdin’s lamp, the slave. It was Darrington.

  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 don’t mind—” “What dear George?” “There’s someone in the corner, you’ve not noticed.” “O yes, I have. I did. But is it grown up? Why do you ever let it come to parties?” The little back remained obstinately turned upon her. O who was it? Someone, somewhere? “But can’t you say good-afternoon, good-evening?” “No. Mary can’t. She’s not going to be allowed.” It was the other one now speaking. “She can’t and dare not.” “Dare not? Young upstart? And who are you? Imagine.” “I am I. Me. Mary. I’m her latest cavalier. I’m Darrington to the rescue.” O now she had it. Now Hermione had it. This was Mary Dalton. That Dalton woman. How odd she had forgotten.

  “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 cut people like in novels? Did she cut me?” “I believe so.” “But I’ve never been cut. What’s it about? Why?” “Don’t ask me to follow the mad intricacies of our mad Ophelia.” “Is she? Is she really mad then like Ophelia?” “No. Not a bit like Ophelia.” “People warned me. Said she was odd, awful. George did. And then suddenly she’s beside him, having cut across our conversation and he’s kissing her hands in the approved troubadour fashion.” “But isn’t that too characteristic of old Lowndes?” “Is it? I don’t know. I knew him very well in Philadelphia. Here he’s different.” “Wouldn’t George take on colour from any setting?” “I don’t know. I was just thinking how strong he was really and how kind. I liked the way he whistled across the room and I liked the way nobody paid any attention to him.” “Maria paid attention.” “Why do you call her Maria?” “I don’t.” “But you did, you do.”

  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 h
ad 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?