“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. Bastard. What did that word signify? Someone was looking at them. A ghost, something. “O.” Hermione had turned in intuition of strange terror not expecting to see anything, seeing Maurice Morrison standing in the doorway. Odd face, too tall, leaning forward. How long had he been listening? Hermione had turned with an odd artificial little gesture, her hand on her grey gown above, singularly erratic heart-beat. She had felt the man there. How long had he been standing?
“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 Delacourt Morrison the famous lecturer? “O I think I know now. Did you give talks, lectures, on art, Renaissance and several cities, Vienna, Sienese to different girls’ schools, colleges—with pictures afterwards, essays?” Maurice Delacourt Morrison was smiling at her. It was odd to be sitting in a bedroom on a bed actually with the wife of such a celebrity. “We were always impressed. I mean at Lyn Mawr, you know the college—” “Perfectly.” “I hated it. I suppose you hated it.” “Miss Thornton, your president, was, wasn’t she, somewhat of a snob?” “Yes, wasn’t she? I hated the place. Was only there a short time.” Maurice Morrison and school girls’ adoration. Yet somehow understanding. What did he say, squinting sideways at them? “I told Maurice on pain of death not to wear his eye-glass—at least till you got used to his ensemble—” “Ensemble. But why should I get used to it?” The sort of thing you think and don’t say, but Maurice Morrison suavely lifted a left over thin slice of bread and butter and bit it neatly and exactly and somehow elegantly. “Haven’t you had tea?” Fayne, Hermione was glad to notice, had the right maternal-marital attitude. “Yes. But beastly. Nothing really worth waiting for—Lady Freezeworth—that atrocious woman—” He was eating their bread and butter, all rather friendly, the three of them on the big bed.
“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 kind of you to ask me.”
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 do you mean? Can’t you just say it simply?” “I mean there ain’t no damn use your thinking you’re going to Dresden with them.” “But I’ve arranged everything. He’s even got my ticket.” “He damn well has—well, he can damn well keep it or—” what George murmured was lost in his velvet coat sleeve. He seemed to be biting at the cuff like a bad-tempered organ monkey in his little jacket. “George don’t eat your buttons. There’ll be food soon.” “O God damn, why did I ever come here?” “To see, as we all came to see, Fayne Rabb in her bride things.”
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, a
ll 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 such a work on Dante.”
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 bride’s ring.”
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 feeling that they might. None of that. Fayne seemed to rise somewhere in the dark street, to rise a white star, a white folded lily. Her dress wound about her stern small figure like lily leaves, a lily-bud still budded. “Don’t you understand? They’re not really—married.”
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, are that Rhodocleia—” I send you Rhodocleia for your hair. The room was different. All the trail, all the built up tenuous memoirs had been blighted. Can a white lily-bud blight with its devastating beauty all the garden?
“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 so far with George Lowndes.” The husband was all suavity but she saw, they let her see, what they thought of her. Whispers. Innuendoes. Burning scar of blame that wasn’t right though George had kissed her. George being (as she had never seen him) rude to everyone. “Her mother cabled—” He had made that up and other things but shame had burnt across her. A wilted, worn Hermione lifted her tea-cup, smiled at Darrington. “I don’t think I can stay now in London. Everything looks different and my room’s changed.” “Changed?” “I mean it used to be full of light, rose colours. All your letters. If I go across to Paris will you write me?”
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.
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