Now he said, “is it true Vane wants you to go off to Cornwall with him?” It was another day and she was so happy spreading her fingers to the unaccustomed luxury of the fire that she didn’t think, couldn’t think and Darrington, Jerrold, had brought her winter daffodils. “He never came here while you were away. Only lately.” “Lately?” Darrington was different, he was looking at her, eyes wide and staring, not the mad badness of him but wide and somehow lost, lost in the room, looking around the room, their room, that he hardly ever came to now, asking her about Vane. “What—does—he—want?” “He doesn’t want anything. He’s just sorry—” “Sorry? You told him?” “No. Things get about. You can’t expect them not to. He asked me if I—liked you.” “And you told him?” “I said I had liked you, loved you. That you were different.” “And he said?” “He said, you’d better wait till the war’s over and give the lieutenant a fresh chance.’” “Why did he say that?” “I don’t know. He doesn’t really like me. He wants to— save me.” “Damn right—” “Right?” “To save you. You’d best hop it. Clear out. You can’t stay here another flu epidemic. You’re most all in now.” “Yes. We—all—are.” “Astraea—”
Trampled flowers smell sweet. “Do you remember the spray of violets that were growing, by just that miracle at the base of the broken white marble foot, that hadn’t been dug out yet, leaves brushed away, a foot that had been there, had been standing. So Beauty is still standing, a broken foot—” “You are obsessed with these things, sister of Charmides.” “Charmides? I don’t remember.” “Surely you do, Astraea. That poem of Wilde. He loved statues.” “Yes, Charmides. Statues—” “You never loved, cared. We were never married.” “Married? But Naples?” “The wind from the Bay was as married, more, than I to you, Astraea. The rock cytisus was more your lover, not as people love.” “Was that my fault?” “Fault? Your misfortune I sometimes think, seeing others, knowing the red wine of ecstacy that you’ve missed.” “Missed? Have I missed anything? I smell the locust blossoms that fell along the quay, the smell of salt weed and the honey locust blossom and the atrocious guitars with Verdi, their Bella Lucia which weren’t atrocious. Things are what they are in proportion to their setting. Love is what it is in relation to its surroundings. I loved you, loved the wrong sound of guitars that weren’t wrong. Things change and love is not to be measured even with an angel’s rod. You are wrong. I loved more than all these people.” “I tell you, frankly, (we were always frank) you do not.” “Do they know that ecstacy of the senses when a phosphorescent eel or some globe shaped sea-monster turns and makes a cone of light in the shadowy tank of the aquarium? There are senses and sets of sense vibration that they don’t know. I felt with senses that you don’t know—” “Don’t argue. You can’t argue of Love. You don’t know about love—” Let him go on. Broken cyclamen, trampled flowers are sweeter. He loved her very much and his self had opened to let self out. His other self, or sleeping self opened before her eyes. It was hidden like the fleck of colour in the tulip bulb, that fleck of colour that was his life, his soul. It opened before her eyes but it couldn’t go on opening. They were severed, had been severed. It is to their credit that they recognized that severance, saw it, stood up to it, dared it, challenged it. “You won’t forget—” “Forget?” What was forget. Things are part of you as the threads of a deep sea creature, its threads of feelers are itself. Butterfly antennae are the butterfly body, more subtly, more intrinsically than the soft moth-belly of it. It was her misfortune (sometimes her questionable strength) that she felt outwardly with her aura as it were of vibrant feelers rather than with the soft moth-belly of her body. She felt knowing her limitations, more than they felt. Knowing her limitations, she realised that the tender feelers of her being were in danger. Butterfly antennae to be withered like the soft forward feeling of a moth’s breath. Breath of a moth, of some soul. . . “Does he really want you?”
“I tell you yes. At least he doesn’t want to go alone there.” “If I go west, then he’ll marry you, look after you.” “O no. I don’t want that. I don’t think so far. If you come back I come back. You will be different after it’s over. This is no test of courage. I’m sorry I couldn’t have done more, helped further.” “There is no help, there was none. Louise knows my needs. I love her. You don’t know what I mean by that. I love her, she adores me.” “Obviously. Do you want to marry then?” “God help me—no. Not Louise . . . wait for me.”
8
So she waited. She was in two parts. Part of her had got out, was out, was herself, the gold gauze, the untrampled winged thing, the spirit, if you will or if you will the mere careless nymph, the careless lover, the faithless wife. The faithless wife had wings of gauze and now she knew better what love was for Cyril Vane was tall and gentle and not heavy and not domineering like her husband. Husband, lover . . . the 1860 thrill. I don’t yet quite know how I did it, it was partly that he helped me, seeing that it was all lop-sided, it was brotherly of him, rather dear of him at the last bursting into my room after he had said good-bye saying he would—come—back. She had come away out of the ruin of London, escaping raids, escaping cold and colds and the horror that was around them. She had poise here, power. She was re-established. It was Vane who was her husband, more her husband, thoughtful, always right. She had reticences with Vane . . . a “nice” woman, over-romantic, tenuous, poetical and this was her right husband. Vane was right and Darrington never had been and that was why looking back, looking back across the weeks, across the few lovely months that she felt tremours, sadness, wistful longings for that other who was so very far from perfect. “What, another letter?” The letters came now more and more frequently from France. Letters from Darrington from France. Letters, it was right to have letters. Whose were the letters? Postman seeing letters, all the letters, it was right that she should have letters. Hermione hid the letters from her husband as if they were from a lover—it was so mixed, lover, husband. She should have obviously married someone like Cyril Vane, great house, everything clear and clean and beautiful, walls lined with books, her own room and everything right, the house-keeper dignified, everything right. People like Vane didn’t have to explain things. It was people like Darrington that had to bluster a little, say “the gov’nor you know, four quarterings, but all faked.” Faked or not faked you did not hear of Vane’s people, nor his quarterings. People, faces. She was right here, face looking at you is right face for you Hermione. Your face now belongs to you, skin with a hint of burnt-honey brown, hair drawn back and fastened with broad band. Face looks at you and your hands though thin are firm and strong and fasten the velvet band and your frock is smooth and your hands are clean and your sewing bag is right and you don’t care too much now about reading. You lie in the sun and your face nozzles down into tiny bell-flower, tiny white bells of heather, so sweet a smell rising up, rising up from the edge of the cliff and below you, there are further shelves clotted now with primroses, thick with clotted blossom. Shelves flow like veins of lapis and those lapis veins are simply hyacinth but seen from up here they make just such a deep blue line like a crack of lapis in a shelf of emerald. Was there ever such green? Flowers that are (it must be) rose-campion, little flowers along the edge of a field; the fields are small, small, simply imagination come true. This is reality. Heady gorse, thick with its yellow makes ridges and lumps of pure gold and I must be somewhere else. I haven’t died for I am substantiated, there is no breaking out of myself, I am myself. I can walk, run, lie on the grass for there is never anyone about here and it’s odd the place being haunted and Vane getting it cheap and a bore Fletcher, the house-keeper keeps saying she hears noises. She’ll leave, that’s the next thing and I hate cooking and we are so far from anywhere and no one has been here since the—war. What is the war? There is a thing you mean when you say “since” and “the.” What is the war? People, faces that don’t matter. That is the war. The war is people and faces that don’t matter. The war is Louise with her Sienna slant of eyes and the carna
tion embroidered Chinese shawl and her standing and looking and looking and standing . . . the war is some boy who was swept out in the column for the whole column was swept out and they said it that way as if the whole column being swept out was the reason for his being swept out and that that explained it. They didn’t seem to understand death, didn’t know it when it faced them, was this bravado, or sheer stupidity? But I can’t cope with England. I can’t cope with all this. Cornwall is Phoenician and that boats tipped their sails toward this very rock and certainly if I went high on the earn at night, I should see things, images, ghosts. Funny old Mrs. Fletcher the housekeeper hearing things, says she can’t stand it much longer. Loneliness. She must be . . . lonely. What is loneliness? Loneliness is a room full of people and Louise in a carnation embroidered shawl and the crowd going round and round and round and having to keep one’s head up. Loneliness is a crowded room and the guns making a row and people, people, people . . . a gull wings up and wings around and screeches at me. His nest must be near here. I’ll find it.
Gulls crawl into my arms but I’m not alive. It’s rather odd suddenly being dead, being out of it and the others alive, somewhere, no, dead somewhere and I alone alive. Loneliness of Eve in paradise. That is my loneliness. Gulls crawl into my arms for I am too happy to cry but if I could cry it seems to me I would be happier. I don’t care about anything, about anybody. This place seems to have been made for me but what is wrong? Paradise won too soon, beauty in its perfection come too soon. I hate myself for not caring any more about the lilies that grow with each minute across the length and breadth of France. Each minute that the clock ticks, each minute that my heart beats, some boy is flinging away a flower, a white flower, one alone on top of a hill, one alone in a ditch, but one can’t go on remembering these things. I forgot them long ago and I for-got them for if I had gone on thinking, remembering (Americans don’t care, don’t understand) I should have gone mad simply. I felt it coming up, rising up against my skull. I felt a lily-bud push up against my skull, it wasn’t imagination, it was reality, (like the bracelet that day, going to Milly Lechstein’s) something I saw, not something I imagined, vision not dreams. In a vision, I saw myself grow up against my self and knew in a few days the white lily bud would strike the top of my head which is my brain, which is my skull. Then, if the lily-bud had struck the top of my head (the metal layer that was my brain) it would have withered simply. My soul would have withered as simply as a lily itself (any French lily) seared by a cannon flare. Lilies that fall and lie fallen, the lily of me grew up and up and up because I let the head go, the right and wrong of the head and Darrington helped me, Darrington said do wrong for to do wrong is to do right. What is right? What is wrong? Wrong is plodding through days and dying in London, dying in London. Right is saving myself, my life, for what? I am lonely in this paradise. Look at me bird, you hate me. I found you, I got you. I don’t care how your parents screech and wheel above me, you are old enough to leave your nest and you fill a hollow of my arms. There is some hollow of my arms you fill. You fill it completely. I know I have stolen you, ruined your happiness, but why shouldn’t I? I am priestess, infallible, inviolate. I am chosen. No Penelope. Cassandra? Madness rings me. I see in rings, in circles, light is advancing in a spiral. Light struck from the wall. Gulls. Crabs in sea pools. The wild orchids ring rocks. Make sacrifice. The white bull that lowers after me seeks to slay me. The fox crawls out of his hole to watch me. We are alone. Phoenician, left over, this coast has reality but the rest is hollow nothingness. I am sorry that I can’t any more believe in the reality of war-fare. Jerrold.
“Jerrold, I must tell you at once. Let me know how you feel about it . . .” But before she could hear from Jerrold there was some oracle to be placated. She would find what the oracle said and she would follow the oracle whatever Jerrold said. She would ask Jerrold first, tell Vane afterwards, consult the oracle in between times but whatever the oracle said, must go. Oracle, there are thousands of you. Antiquity lives here. Witchcraft . . . but I won’t try anything like that though I could try it . . . I know I have knowledge. It’s come here to me, the knowledge that I have knowledge. I must make some demand, find out something for things like this don’t happen (only in war-time) and Cyril said he would be careful, would be careful. . . careful. They always say that, Darrington said that. Vane said that. “Careful.” What is care? Cassandra. Am I then Cassandra? What has Vane to do with it, long body, slim and cool and different . . . what has he to do with it, always thoughtful, never domineering? He has had nothing to do with it for he says always he has been careful but what is careful? There is God in one and God out of one and now that God is in me. I feel no difference between in and out. Something had happened to me, whatever the oracle may say, I know already something has happened to me. But I’ll ask it, for inside and outside are the same, God in and out, all gold, gorse, pollen-dust, gold and gold of rayed light slanting across the low spikes of white orchid and fragrance in and out, the same wind that blows across waters blew sails here from Phoenicia and perhaps I was a gypsy, Egyptian, having children as priests, priests having children with priestesses. This is no ordinary thing, war-time, things happen and the white bull shook and lowered at me but I must have the answer. Gull in my arms fill my arms. Sacrifice and sacrifice and now they will hate me, the birds will hate me, not all the birds. Go away sea-bird, I must find a land-bird and now in my room, I’ll wait and ask . . .
Layers of life are going on all the time only sometimes we know it and most times we don’t know it. Layers and layers of life like some transparent onion-like globe that has fine, transparent layer on layer (interpenetrating like water) layer on layer, circle on circle. Plato’s spheres. Sometimes for a moment we realize a layer out of ourselves, in another sphere of consciousness, sometimes one layer falls and life itself, the very reality of tables and chairs becomes imbued with a quality of long-past, an epic quality so that the chair you sit in may be the very chair you drew forward when as Cambyses you consulted over the execution of your faithless servitors. Cruelty and beauty and love of beauty is the common heritage of the whole race. Everything is to each but it is only in developing ones own genius, one’s own mean personality (which is one’s innate daemon) that we can reach the realization of some sphere which is for all time, eternal, flowing as water, colourless, transparent which falling imbues the very common chair you sit in the very ordinary book you lift and open with some quality that is one with the Revelation of Saint John the Divine or the orders of Sappho. Colour there is in this sphere world, colour of the red anemone, colour as seen under clear water, colour as sea-coral seen through crystal. World falls over your head and you are embedded in the world; you are its only imperfection, a fly in its clear amber; you are its only imperfection yet your very presence giving quality, point, perspective to this otherwise so measureless luminous body. Fly in amber, Hermione stood in her room, a very fly enclosed in clear substance and she asked of swallows wheeling and swirling before the small open window if she should have it. Her heart ticked, dared not tick, knew the moment she had made the poignant demand of something outside (you may call it God or Plato’s circles) that it would answer, that its answer would be infallible. The door was shut. The window was open. The window faced east, faced the semi-circle of terraced stones that was the Druidical, that was the almost classic amphitheatre that the opposite earn made for the receiving of the sun’s first rays, for the receiving of the dew of the sky, for the receiving of the round globe of the moon that floated above it, would fall and embrace the very curve of the hillside like Artemis the thigh of tall sleeping young Endymion. Classic images here blend with Druidical surroundings, the round stones placed in their circle of seven, the very obvious flat altar stones higher on the earn and the enormous great ivy-trees, rounder than a huge, huge arm, trees of stock of ivy like a body, were the body (obviously) of some God. Dionysus. Druid priests. Ivy. The crown of the sacrificed. Things in the air, several layers of mysteries and all the t
ime the knowledge that England was a cloud and she was looking down at England and at the war and at all the poor dark cloud of people from a height, so high, so clear an atmosphere that breathing it, she felt her very lungs gross and porous, great porous gross wings, beating inside her hulk of bone and frame of white bone covered with parchment flesh. Her body was like some mummified thing come to life and the breath in her lungs was pure spirit, the breath was part of the outer circle, the circle that had fallen, that had fallen some days ago (what was it, two days, three, must count exactly) when even the remote possibilities . . . how did one think of these things? The whole pain and worry had been eliminated. Her body was like some coffin merely, a thing of bone and fibre, a cocoon for the enfolding of a spirit.
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