Weave, that is your métier, Morgan le Fay, weave subtly, weave grape-green by grape-silver and let your voice weave songs, songs in the little hut that gets so blithely cold, cold with such clarity so that you are like a flower of green-grape flowering in a crystal globe, in an ice globe for the air that you breathe into your lungs makes you too part of the crystal, you are part of the air, part of the crystal, and the air in your lungs and the voice that rises to some impossible silver shrill note in this empty little hut is a voice of silver, you are nothing, a blur of nothing, only the air in your lungs and the beating of your lungs like wings and the high impossible note make you one with beauty, with reality though you are nothing, ugly dark blue mis-shapen gown, stooping to gather twigs, to light the fire, breathe in the fumes of the smoke and you are one with the forest. Gods, daemons. This is your character. Your voices, your lungs (breathing air) chain you to people, you have lungs like people, air is free to all. On the just and unjust. Air. Air is a deity. To-day he wears silver sandals, the frost of sandals is in his breath and when he kisses me I am taken with his winged heels to the top of Olympus and I stand viewing all Hellas. Hellas? Hellas? What of Hellas? O, Hellas was yesterday at Marion’s and that stark note of command, that demanding of me all that I have—what is the girl, she must be foreign, English people never care like this, don’t read everything, she picked my brains, how tired she left me. Morgan le Fay build your pile of branches, blow high your smoke . . . breathe in your enchantments with the forest smoke, sing silver . . . silver . . . for you are doomed.
What is the matter with me? Why can’t I get away from people? I am in several pieces, it’s true, but I gave up the stark glory of the intellect, I chose finally this thing. O sister, my sister O fleet sweet swallow. I might not have had it. I chose it and I am taking the consequences of this choice which was the great choice, which was heaven. Unless you become as a little child, unless you become one with a little child, I have it and I am it and I don’t see why I can’t be let alone anyhow. Cornwall was some ledge of enchantment and Morgan le Fay fell under a druid altar and a god watching the sunrise, waiting for the sun-set so discovered her and sent his bird, the bird that came in, the sound of a child’s voice crying yet and I said yes, soit, so be it, bowed my head like Magdalene, like Mary and said yes and I know that God makes me one, one with trees, with the sea, this is my terrain, even as a baby I used to crawl away under the bushes, the great white rose bush was like a forest to me then and I made nests of twigs, pretended to be a bird, a great swan with my nest and the kittens were the cygnets. Nests and birds and the kittens whose fur was like down and the colour was right, brown cygnets, rather ugly for beautiful swan, that was me, great swan of four years under a white rose bush. Eugenia (I called her mama then) loved roses. Pull off the thorns, it is more polite, strip them carefully if you offer them to anybody, for it shows you have been brought up nicely and everything you do wrong reacts on your parents. Who had brought up Darrington? Or Cyril Vane? Thorns. Für bei den Rosen gleich die Dornen stehn. Toute épine a sa rose. It works both ways. But it was all right. I ran away. Vane said he would “look after me” but I ran away. I couldn’t sit night after night and see him not understanding, well bred annunciation angel in Chelsea, in Saint John’s Wood. We would have had a pretty house, everything I wanted and the romantic scandal but all patched up, poetical, and his family so wealthy . . . I couldn’t have stood it. Except ye become as little children. O he might have tried to understand, just to have said, “good for you, splendid, you are risking your life again like any soldier” but he wasn’t a soldier and Darrington was only an imitation one though she didn’t hold that against him and he couldn’t be expected to understand. Für bei den Rosen gleich die Dornen stehn and after all there had been that beauty of pre-war Italy, pre-war Easter in Sorrento and the oranges that year had an unearthly fragrance. Freesias bordered the garden paths and she found violets to weave a crown . . . wound into her hair so funny at night and Darrington called her Aphrogenia. Aphrogenia . . . a blossom of flowering seas . . . and a goddess and mother of Rome. Rome. The campagna. The Pincian Gardens, it was about this time, early winter that we went there. Tea in a little underground passage, very chic. Italian officers (pre-war) in blue cloaks. O sister my sister, O singing swallow . . . all the same I don’t see why they can’t let me alone. I am Morgan le Fay (am I?) and I belong to trees, woods and I have every right to my security in this little hut with its delicious cold and its delicious isolation and I don’t want to be disturbed, worried by the pedantic wretched child. I can’t think of her as grown up. “Dear Mrs. Darrington” (she would call me that) “it meant so much to me to see you yesterday. I’ll send the car over to fetch you. It will be too far for you to walk,” (O bother her, bother her, bother her) “there’s no time for an answer. The car will call anyway. I’d be terribly, terribly disappointed. You can’t understand. I never met anyone before who knew the Greek Anthology” (bother her, damn her, I don’t) “it meant everything to talk that day of Mallarmé” (Mallarmé, had they? Tuerons la lune) “I beg of you. I am so very lonely.”
Let her be lonely, bother her, there is no such thing as loneliness with a great grey fur rug over your knees. No, there is no such thing as loneliness curled into one corner of a mammoth car, there were no cars like this, how did this come here, great car like a conqueror’s chariot and the wind through the open hood and the world outside made perfect, perfected, and made proportionate to perfection. What do I mean? Why do the trees look so different for they do. It must be just the sheer human perspective but this is luxury and we have all forgotten luxury, we have lived in ditches, for years and years and our lives were light things, pinned lightly to our coats, our brown, fawn brown and horizon blue jackets, tunics, they called them, flowers to be worn lightly, to be tossed away. I have lived so long with trees, with trees that I don’t know what to think, feel like some captured hamadryad under this pelt, this great pelt, how primitive the wealthy are, how primitive this is, rolling on and on and on and the roads are all narrower than they ever were when I walked them, scrambling over the ditches, catching a cluster of red berries to stand in the corner of the clean little hut. All the roads are different. I have no time to remember that that corner held the great orange shaft of late autumn lily that had escaped from the nearby cottage and this is the Tinkers Arms where I stopped that rainy afternoon for tea. Solitude, splendour with a little book in my pocket, tea steaming, “yes, I am here for a few months, my husband is in France. I know Miss Drake.” The country, the country, every inch of it was measurable, English country, being kind to her, why were they kind to her? They were kind in Cornwall, here they were kind to her. Morgan le Fay, great autumn lily wandered from a garden, what are you doing, lover of luxury in these woods, orange lily, glowing with fire, kissed of the fire, in some wood, some beech forest? What are you doing, Morgan le Fay? Drag the pelt over you. It’s getting late. Soon real winter. Prolonged autumn with dark evenings. Sense of mystery in England. England is all a mirage, love it—love it as you love a dream, a place for ghosts, for phantoms, for throw-backs, Morgan le Fay. They were always kind to you in England, I don’t know why, for people say it is a hateful country, why were they so kind? Morgan le Fay, smile Morganlefayishly . . . “yes, I loved the drive over. No, not cold.” House full of odd things, chippendale, old hall, was she living here? Don’t ask. What is the weird child doing here? Why didn’t she say something, say “my father paid a billion billion pounds—for that car,” why wasn’t she communicative, say, “I bought this dress at—” but where had she bought the dress? Hermione couldn’t quite “place” the dress. Where had she found the dress, it was too old for her, her shoes weren’t right. Who had dressed her, head pulled forward by the huge coils of braided hair, tea brought in, she was clumsy with the tea-cups. “O let me help you,” but what a thing to say, never met her but once, asking to pour her tea, that hieratic ceremony. The child held the huge tea-pot in small unbelievably fine li
ttle hands, hands too small, too small for anything, head too heavy and hands too delicate, too small. Head and hands don’t match, what is the matter with her? Her head is too big, her hands are too small, her eyes are far, far too blue . . . “do you—do you—paint?” “O paint—” The girl put down the heavy tea-pot, turned eyes that were far too blue on eyes that were grey and green and somehow coming back (Hermione felt this) to some indoor perspective. “Paint—what made you ask it?” “Your hands—I don’t know—something in the way your eyes stare—” O lovely room, last stray bit of sun, like a gold gauze of fine web falling, filtered through trees outside between drawn beautiful curtains. Little waif, are you a le Fay too? What is this family that seeks its own, brothers and sisters, lost people? Vane had been so dear in Cornwall, was it her fault, her own lack of patience that had lost him? Sister, brother. What were these hectic relationships, this Louise-Darrington alliance, for instance, what did it know, what could it know of these things, these inevitable kinships of the spirit?
Stark colour broke across an old room, gone dim with light fallen to gold-grey, fallen to grey with the hint of gold that under clouds at sun-set throw over grey water, gone to grey water . . . the room was filled with grey water from which odd knobs and handles and the flank of a candle-stick emerged, streaked in the water-grey like metallic gilt sun-fish, flicking here and there fin or under-belly, flicking colour, metallic from and-irons, the claw foot of a table, the reflected fire-light in a polished bowl and the stark upright shafts of hot-house carnations (she had not noticed them before) white wax spikes that glowed now, gave uncommon frost and winter and artificiality to the interior that up till now had been just the web and comfort of a big country room with the firelight and the inexpressible comfort of the great arm-chair after the camp-chairs, deck-chairs and the low crude (but so dear) foot stools of the little cabin shelter. Carnations. “How did they get there?” “What—where?” “I hadn’t noticed the carnations till the sun faded and they glowered out wax-white, taper-white, I hadn’t noticed the scent, now it comes over me, so spiced, so cold, so hieratic in this room that smells of logs, of tea, of comfort, of pot-pourri, I noticed that when I first came in.” “We always have carnations—dada loves them.” “O dada.” Then there was a dada. Who was this dada? My dada paid a billion pounds for the car (but she hadn’t said it). Which car? An emperior. He was Tiberius obviously. “Is your (if you will forgive me) ‘dada,’ Tiberius?” Was it possible that the child could laugh? It seemed so. High, clear, the voice of a boy laughing over a fish that has fallen from his line that he with some arrogant and unexpected gesture has caught back, flung into the net as it was just escaping. The laugh lit the room with the same metallic glamour, the slight note of discord, like clear tropic fish beating up out of grey water. “You don’t seem altogether—English.” This was the sort of thing one never said nowadays. She oughtn’t to have said it. “You see, being myself really American—” would excuse everything, every lapse and the faux pas of intimating anybody wasn’t English in this time. “O but we are—we aren’t—” “I thought so. I mean I thought you were—you weren’t. What (if I’m not being curious) are you?” “Dad has boats. Now not so many. A hundred have been lost. We were always in Egypt in the winter—” “You were born then in Egypt?” “No—nearly though in Naples—” “Ah—Naples—” Under trees flowering with the locust blossom, that sweet honey and salt of the sea and the salt and the weeds lying against the break-water and the odd wrong songs, the bella Lucia and the atrocious Verdi. “Naples—” The word prolonged into the odd interior, the grey water from which the fin of a brass candle-stick, the flick of the back of a cigarette box or the bright ivory worked on the polished idol she just now noticed, made eccentric Chinese, tropical odd comment on the very greyness. Pot pourri-like incense and the heady sharp stinging sweetness of the staunch white taper of the hot-house winter carnation . . . room full of subtlety yet strength, odd comment on the world, on the war. How had she ever come here? In the room against the sheer north grey and the more obvious erratic Chinese, tropical glint of fish-fin that was the candle-stick and knob of something that was the crystal glass knob of something that was the crystal substance of some delicate jelly-fish, more obvious European, classic colour obtruded. Naples? Names, people, names. Naples. Atrocious sound of Verdi, Bella Lucia. Blue, blue, blue. “Why is it that one immediately thinks of stark blue, thick blue that you can cut with a knife when one says Naples?” Someone from somewhere had switched on a light but it didn’t matter and the light was modified from where she sat by the heavy idol on the table, by the sprays of tall upstanding stark wax-taper of the white carnation. Someone was moving forward, gathering up the tray but it didn’t matter. It was the sort of someone that would do things like that so they wouldn’t be noticed, could go on talking, even about Naples. “Stark, stark blue. Why is it?”
O this is terrible. At last after all these months. I have found perfection, have fallen into a beautiful chair, have sat throned yet at peace, doesn’t the girl know what is the matter with me? O this is too much, too much. The run over in the great car, the warm rug about my feet, the feeling of the world coming back, yes the “world,” houses with carpets on stairs, windows with curtains drawn, wine in different shaped glasses, stems of glasses in a circle on white damask and flowers in the centre of the table, made artificial by the stiff upright symmetry of them. Flowers on tables and curtains drawn and the right side of the right person at the right dinner at Delia Prescott’s, all those things came back when I sank in this chair, smelt the translucent fumes of tea that was real tea, tea a ceremony, Chinese . . . what was it? All that had come to Hermione in her corner of the room, in her great chair and now all that was going. Didn’t the girl understand? No, it would be like Marion, wrong kind of delicacy, never to have told her about the baby and after all, here is this child, perhaps she knows nothing at all. O impossible! Yet staring back into eyes that stared and stared (now that she was just leaving) Hermione asked herself if perhaps she wasn’t in some net of wrong enchantment, must pay, it seems for everything, but this was too much to pay for beauty and seclusion and the trees going past the open car window all in proportion. Paintable. Things seen in perspective become things to be grappled with. Art. Isn’t art just re-adjusting nature to some intellectual focus? The things are there all the time, but art, a Chinese bowl, a Chinese idol, a brass candle-stick make a focus, a sense of proportion like turning the little wheel of an opera glass, getting a great mass of inchoate colour and form into focus, focussing on one small aspect of life though really it is only a tiny circle, a tiny circle. You get life into a tiny circle by art and that was where Morgan le Fay was wrong with her craft for she would say all art is man’s mere imagining and see, the shell by the shore, the one petal of a water-lily is a sort of crystal glass, a bright surface and you yourself staring at it, may make things in the air, pictures, images, things beyond beauty beautiful. But there is where Morgan le Fay was wrong. We are strung together, we all have lungs, must breathe, breathe, breathe, we men and gods, rather we men and demi-gods for Morgan le Fay and Circe and Cassandra and the Oreads and Hermione were only half-people, half gods, demi-divinities like this child whom now half-god Hermione saw was also one of the half-people. O what good did motor cars do anyway and having Tiberius for a father if you had to stare this way? Now sinking back in her chair having almost said good-bye, Hermione must ask her.
“What is it in your eyes. I’m awfully sorry (will the man mind waiting another ten minutes?). I can’t go home all alone without knowing. You will I am sure forgive me. I want to know what it is in your eyes for they have looked at me and looked at me, seeming to want to tear something out of me like evil-minded urchin opening up a chrysalis to see the unborn butterfly. I am sorry if I have been uncomprehending. It’s true you wrote me you were lonely. I have forgotten for a long time the meaning of that word for I am—I am—” but she couldn’t tell her that. It occurred to Hermione suddenly that the
child might hate her, turn against her, consider her beyond the pale, a woman with a fine leashed intellect (for the child adored the intellect) having so far forsaken the snow-white arcana of Pallas, so far as to fall . . . fall . . . fall . . . there were other islands. She wanted to tell the child about those other islands. “There are other haunts, not of the intellect.” The child said simply staring with the eyes that weren’t now blue at all, gone grey as if a film of ice lay with devastating blight across a space of blue and heaven-blue gentians. That was the trouble, that was what unnerved. The eyes were glazed over like the eyes of the blind. There was something odd, unseemly, difficult. Hermione wanted to get out, get away, hold on to her web of gauze, continue the melting loveliness into her own room, take it back with her to spread it like thin honey over the plain wheat-bread of her plain days. She wanted to eat the gauze with her spirit, make it her own, take it back, treasure it and let flecks of it brighten days and days . . . for days after all were days and sometimes drawing the water from the little well, wandering up to the distant farm for her supplies, waiting at the post office for her notes from Darrington (Darrington was writing, writing to her) she felt days as days . . . heavy lead-winged days that had to be endured for at the end of days and days there were worse days . . . worse days . . . days of fire and slaughter . . . madness, no, she daren’t think, had morganlefayed it, made herself a dream in a dream to sustain herself, to sustain the small le Fay. What was this staring at her? Was it another child, child of her mind, her spirit? Did God increase his burden . . . to him that hath . . . shall be given . . . but she didn’t want this mad child vamping her. She couldn’t stand perils of the intellect. She wanted to escape the mind and all it stood for. She wanted to take from this girl not give to her. “I know. I suppose you wanted to paint. It was like that with me—only music—” What was she going to say, where was it going to take her? “I shouldn’t think too much, wait a little—wait a little—” The girl said surprisingly yet not to Hermione at all surprisingly, “I can’t wait much longer. I’ve thought it all out. I can’t have what I want, paint, the smell of it, boxes of paints, freedom—I’m going to kill myself—it isn’t exactly anybody’s fault—but I can’t stand it.” “Can’t stand—what?” “Everything. Nothing. All things. Nothing at all. Myself chiefly.”
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