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. You are a poem though your poem’s naught. To the left ladies and gentlemen we have the famous Notre Dame. The Isle of de France. The island of France, all France. Islands. All the world’s a stage. Muguet (why?) tucked into her light spring jacket. “Hello Her-mi-o-ne.”
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 marry him.” But it wasn’t true. George was vulgar, base. George had betrayed her. It was George who was vulgar.
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 Russian. No. I simply stayed as I had friends there. Yes. I know. Yes.” The baby-grand strutted forward, nosed with his baby-grand grand manner into the very table, dwarfed them, the chairs, the book case crowded with untidy layers of books, magazines. Shirley had everything. It was something to have everything. Shirley was very kind. Quite kind. It had been rather casual, bouncing up the stairs, rushing in at tea time, but she was alone, said she was glad to see Hermione. “You see I seem to know you, knowing people that you do.” “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. What people?” “Well there’s George Lowndes.” “O, of course, George Lowndes.” Did this Shirley love then George? George kept coming up, coming back. “That’s a portrait of him.” Shirley was waving a tea spoon (a Florentine little lily on a disproportionate stem handle) toward a portrait. “O yes, I saw it when I came in.” George had all the while been s
quinting slightly at her back, squinting ironically, with hand lifted and a more than ever ornate vermillion and speckled gold mosaic cravat. “I told George I’d keep it here though it’s really his, belongs to him.” “O yes.” But Shirley needn’t go out of her way to explain. Why did she explain. Did people accuse her of things too? Had she kissed George, had George kissed her? Did people lift well-bred eye-brows and smile and say in well-bred voices, “O I had no idea things had gone so far with George.” Is that why Shirley liked her, wanted to talk to her? Did Shirley really like her. Wasn’t it that Shirley wanted to find things out, was trying? But Shirley seemed not so much to want to find out things as to (with an interrogation) impart them. “And what really is the girl like hes engaged to?”
“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 tell me but he hinted.” “Well, I thought it odd. He said, always said he was your nearest relative—” “Male relative.” “Male relative. I thought from that you were quite intimate.”
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.” “House-wife” “Well isn’t it that exactly? Its so exactly right and she’s so pretty. Walter needs a mother.” “Mother. Is she pretty?” “Well. I thought so.” “Did you? I can’t say that I ever thought her—pretty. I think she’s funny and she helps out his music—” “Does she?” “O I don’t know. I don’t know anything of music.” “Walter said you listened.” “O—that—”
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.
Asphodel Page 14