The Found and the Lost

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  We could all go to Portland on the train from Gearhart and have the wedding there, in that stone church with the tower. It would be in the Portland papers. Miss Lily Herne of Klatsand Weds.

  Dorothy’s mother has that old lace veil that’s been in her family for hundreds of years and they keep it in the camphor chest wrapped up in old yellowy tissue paper. She showed it to me. I will be her Maid of Honor when she gets married. We promised. I wish we had an old lace veil. Grandmother never had anything pretty. She wore those awful old boots and lived behind the grocery store. All she left Mother was this house and the one the Browns live in and that land up on the Head that’s all wild forest. I wish she’d bought the Norsman house instead and then we could live in it. Mr. Hambleton said to Mother, “That is a real mansion, Jane. I’m surprised your mother didn’t buy it when she bought up the half-block.” If the porch was fixed and it was all painted white with shining parquet floors it would be a real mansion, and we could have the wedding there with the wedding party coming down the stairs, and a long lace train on my wedding dress, and a cunning little flower girl in pink, and the little boy ring bearer in blue short pants could be little Edward. They play “Here Comes the Bride” as I descend the shining curving stairs.

  I could go to Portland to the girls’ school there and make a dear friend and be married in her house in the exclusive West Hills with parquet floors and landscape pictures in the wallpaper, and as I walk down the shining curving stairs in silver and white lace a bevy of beautiful debutantes watches and the orchestra plays “Here Comes the Bride.” My friend’s father gives the bride away. He is tall and distinguished with iron-grey hair just at the temples. He takes my arm. My bridal attendants arrange my train of white and silver lace. Miss Lily Herne of Klatsand. Miss Lily Frances Herne of Portland Weds. The bride’s bouquet was of orange blossoms shipped from Southern California. I would still throw it to Dorothy.

  Jane, 1907

  THIS IS WHY I WAS born:

  I wear the black skirt, the white shirtwaist, the white apron, and I pin the white cap on my hair. I wear my hair teased out, combed over itself, pinned up, and piled high. I take their orders, smiling. I carry trays of food. The women approve of me, watching me move so quick and neat. The men admire, looking away, looking back. I have seen their hands tremble. I pass behind them, a breath on the red nape of the neck above the celluloid collar. Thank you, Miss. I pass in and out the swinging doors between the hot shouting kitchen and the cool murmuring dining room of the Exposition Hotel. I carry trays that bear plates of food, plates of crusts and bones and smears, glasses full, glasses stained and empty. I set down the hot dish, delicately arranged and colored, odorous, appetizing. I lift up the cold, streaked, and greasy dish. I set down the wineglass and I carry it away. I am neat and light and quick and sweet, and I give food to the hungry. I leave order and plenty where I come and go. I content them all. But it is not for this that I go among the tables, brushing like a breath of wind behind their chairs. This is not why I was born! I was born because he stands a little to the left of the desk, his dark head bowed, his hands in the light of the lamp holding the register; and looks up; and sees me. I was born so that he might see me, he was born so that I might see him. He for me and I for him, for this, for this we have come into the daylight and the starlight, the sea and the dry land.

  Fanny, 1908

  SHE WAS ALWAYS A GOOD child, a bright child, her father’s child. She did well at school. The spelling prizes and the composition prizes and the mental arithmetic. She was the Spring Princess in the pageant at Union School. She was the heroine of the Senior Girls’ Play at the High School in the Finn Hall in Summersea. She carried flowers, a sheaf of calla lilies in her arms, and stood and sang that song:

  I don’t care what men may think!

  What care I? What care I?

  She swept her skirts up like a queen and bowed. Where do they learn? How do they know? Running on the beach like a sandpiper, and the next day, “What care I?” so high and strong and sweet, standing like a queen in the lights on the stage, everybody clapping their hands for her. I couldn’t clap. I couldn’t unclench my hands until the curtains came together. Why did I fear for her? Why do I fear for her? She never got into harm. She always did well. Oh, your Janey! they say. Janey waited on us at the Hotel. What a beauty she’s grown! When Mary ran off with that worthless Bo Voder, not even married, I did feel for Alice Morse, but what did she expect, letting Mary paint her face and drive out with every lumberjack and longshoreman? Jane was always friends with Mary, but she never would go out with her with that crowd. I never once was afraid for her that way. She knows her worth. She is a fine girl. Like Jack Shawe, tall and fine, bright eyes and a ready laugh. But proud. Johnny’s going to be like Servine, easy and sweet, easygoing. I’m not afraid for Johnny. No harm will come to him. What is it I fear for my girl? I fear even to say that: “my girl.” Too much at stake.

  I hate a low-stakes poker game, Jack Shawe used to say. Dollar a point, Fan? he’d say, setting out the cribbage board, nights on the Owyhee ranch, dry snow ticking at the walls. I owe you ten thousand dollars already, Jack Shawe! Come on, Fan, dollar a point. No use playing for low stakes.

  It isn’t Lafayette I fear. I believe he’s a good man for all his city ways, and I know he is in love with her. They are in love. Is it just that that I fear? What is being in love? Jack Shawe. My love’s Jack Shawe. From the moment I saw him standing at the harness counter in the store in Oxford. I knew then what I was born for. It all seems so plain and clear. Everything in the world, all life at once, all in one body and one mind. All the promises kept. And all the promises broken. In love you stake it all. All the wealth of the world, all your life’s worth. And it isn’t that you lose, that you’re beggared, so much as that it melts away and melts away into this and that, day in day out wasted, work and talk, getting cross, getting tired, getting nowhere, coughing, nothing. Nothing left. No game. What became of it, of all you were and all you were to be? What became of the love? of the promises? of the promise?

  That’s what I fear for her, maybe. That she’ll be thrown away, like Jack. That she won’t amount to anything, won’t come to be who she is. What woman ever did? Not many.

  It’s some easier for a man. But there aren’t many of much account to start with. Of either sex.

  Lafayette Herne, I don’t know, he might amount to something, he might not. I feel afraid for him, too. Why is that? Have I come to love the boy? Yes, I am part of their love, caught in it; I have called him son.

  He carries his head well. A city man, with his fine clothes and narrow shoes, his thick dark hair well-combed. I like the way he turns his head and smiles. He’s full of confidence. Competent. Assistant manager of the Exposition Hotel, and he’s sure he’ll have the managership of that new hotel he talked about in San Francisco. He’s marrying on that expectation. High stakes. But he’s doing well, at thirty. There is a brilliance in him, a promise. Women see it. And he sees women. Even me, he sees me; I know that; some men see all women. But he’s mad for Jane. It will be a strange life for her, wife of a hotel manager, people coming and going, all strangers all the time, the fine food and drink and clothing, the fast living in the city. Is that what I fear for her, for them? What is it I fear? Why does my heart beat heavily, why are my hands clenched, as I wait here in the hotel room in Astoria, dressed for my daughter’s wedding?

  Lily, 1928

  WHAT OH WHAT OH NOW oh now that’s blood, there’s blood. I am bleeding. I am blood, blood. I am dead. Oh let me be in the black dark underground, under the roots of the trees. Go away, go away, he

  He took me in his car so far, his father’s car in the dark so far away from the party, far away, go away. Go away now so I can hide the blood.

  Maybe it was the curse. Maybe it was the curse come early. Maybe it came in the car in the dark in the road in the forest. After the dance is over how the road turns and twists in the darkness, and on every branch of every tree of the fores
t an angel sits wearing white shining clothing and crying out. I knew that then, but I can see them now. Then all the angels let down drops and spots of blood. Their white what oh their shining clothes have stiff brown spots on them between the legs and there is something on the skirt that smells. The color of the old tub out behind the store, by Grandmother’s stairs, it was rusted through, flaking red-brown, spotted brown, touch it and your finger’s dirty red. Don’t suck it, Dorothy said, you’ll get poison rust, the lockjaw. Maybe it was the curse. All the angels nesting netted in the trees the stars and the huge shadows and then he

  I came in and Mother called, Is that you dear? and I said yes. Last night. Now it’s light I see the blood.

  He turned off the switch no headlamps all dark and the engine silent and I said, Dicky, we really should be going home, and oh there’s oh there’s the bluejay, the jay yelling, but so far away now from the sunlight. That was so dark. Please go away. Oh please oh please oh please go away leave me be. Please stop. The blood began as just a little spot but now it will run out of the pores of my fingers and legs and arms and make spots on all my clothes, on the sheets. The spots dry stiff and brown like poison rust. I smell of that smell. I don’t dare wash. I should not wash. Water is clean. If I wash the water will turn red-brown and smell like me. I’ll make it stink. That’s not a word for nice girls to say, Miss Eltser said, but I but I oh but I am not oh I am not a

  What did I do? What has happened to me? I did what has happened to me. It is what I did. Nice girls

  But I said, Why, that was the turn to Klatsand, wasn’t it? Dicky

  Dicky Hambleton is a college man. He went to California to college, he’ll go back again in the fall. I am in love with him. We have to be in love. He said, Well, little Lily, so tenderly when I came into the living room in my new dress for the party. Lily so tenderly.

  Dorothy left the party. She came and said she was going, but she had Joe Seckett to take her and I was with Dicky so how could I go with her? She said Marjorie said all the boys were going out to Danny Beckberg’s car and he had bootleg and they were drinking and she had seen Dicky Hambleton there with them. But I was waiting for Dicky to come back to dance. I had to wait for him. I have to be in love. That is all tiny and bright and far away at the other end of the road, the band and the dancing and the fairy lanterns and the other girls. Dicky came back, Let’s go, let’s go, Lily, let’s go for a picnic in the woods. But it’s night, I said, I laughed. I wanted to dance, I love to dance. My white skirt was so pretty, shining in the fairy lantern light when I whirled, when Dicky whirled me dancing, and my white shoes on the floorboard of the car but the angels lean out of the huge trees and bleed the darkness and it smells of iron, and the bar of iron Oh! Oh stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!

  San Francisco, Summer of 1914

  THE SUMMER FOG LAY ON the sea. Tendrils of fog reached up the bare hills; fog massed and moved through the Golden Gate, erasing the islands of the bay, the ships on the water, the dark mountains of Marin. Lights lay in faint lines and curves like jewellery along the East Bay shore under hills distinct against the blue-green sky. A ferry coming in to the towered building at the foot of Market Street moved splendid over twilit water.

  A man and a woman in evening dress came out of the Alta California Hotel and paused a moment on the steps. Streetlamps and the glowing windows of the hotel behind them broke the dusk into brilliances and shadows. Facing the street full of voices and movements, the stepping of horses, the roll of high, light wheels, the woman drew a deep breath and held her white silk shawl a little closer. The man turned his head to look at her. He smiled.

  “Shall we walk?”

  She nodded.

  A clerk ran out of the hotel, deferent but urgent: “Mr. Herne, sir, the wire came in from Chicago—” Lafayette Herne turned to speak to him. Jane Herne stood holding the fringed shawl loosely, aware of her own elegance and of her husband’s black-clad, slender, angular body, his low voice speaking; aware also of being posed, being poised, as if on the low, wide steps of the hotel she stood aloof, solitary as a seabird on a wide shore, facing darkness.

  He took her arm very firmly, possessing it. She came, compliant, gathering up her skirt with her free hand to descend the steps, and gathering it up again as they crossed the street littered with horse dung and straw. Through the flare of streetlamps and carriage lamps the wind flowed cool and vast from the sea.

  “Are you warm enough?”

  “Yes.”

  She turned to look into the window of a jeweller’s shop as they passed it, black velvet knobs and satin nests emptied for the night. He said, dryly, as if her distraction annoyed him, “I have thought about what you said.”

  “Yes,” she said, looking straight before her, stepping out, although her stride was shortened by the fitted evening skirt.

  “I’ve decided that you should go to your mother, as you wished, with Lily, of course, for the rest of July and August. You can go whenever you like. Take a bedroom on the Starlight. I’ll come up in September if I can for a day or two, and we can travel back together. I’ve been working very hard, Jane, and I realize I’ve let my concerns prevent me from paying enough attention to your wishes.”

  “Or my concerns,” she said, smiling.

  He made a little, impatient, controlled motion of his head in response, and was silent for a minute as they walked. “You’ve been wanting to visit your mother. I see my selfishness in keeping you here.”

  “You asked me to stay, and I stayed. You weren’t keeping me.”

  “Why must you quibble over the words? All our quarrels start with that. However you want me to say it, I’m saying that I was selfish to keep you here. I’m sorry. And I’m saying go, as soon as you like.”

  She walked on, and he glanced sidelong at her face.

  “It’s what you said you wanted,” he said.

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  He drew her arm closer in his, with a movement of relief. He began to speak, and she made a little noise, perhaps a laugh of incredulity, at the same moment.

  “I don’t see the joke.”

  “We’re play-acting. If we could talk, instead of fencing—”

  “I tell you that you can do what you said you wanted to do, and you say I’m play-acting, fencing. Well, what is it you want, then?”

  They walked on a half block before she answered. He had shortened his stride so that they went pace for pace, their heels striking the pavement smartly. They had turned north on a quieter street, less brilliantly lighted than Market.

  “To be an honest woman,” she said, “married to an honest man.”

  A dray loaded with ten-gallon cans, hauled by a powerful team of Percherons, rumbled and clattered beside them the length of the block. They crossed a street, Lafayette Herne looking left and right and holding his wife’s arm close.

  “So,” he said lightly, “you’re going to keep on making me pay.”

  “Pay? Pay what?”

  “For that whole misunderstanding.”

  “Was it a misunderstanding?”

  “The business with Louisa? Of course it was. A mistake, a misunderstanding. How often do I have to say so? How often do we have to go back to it?”

  “As often as you lie to me. Do I make you lie?”

  “If you keep going back over the same thing, if you have no belief in me—what am I to say, Jane?”

  “You want me to believe you when you lie,” she said, as if asking his confirmation of the statement.

  “How can I say anything you will believe while you keep nursing this grudge, this spite? You won’t let me make a fresh start. You said”—and his voice shook, plangent—“that we were beginning over. But you never let me begin.”

  After a few more steps she drew her arm out of his and caught up the trailing corner of her shawl. The fog was thickening, turning the light of the streetlamps milky in the distances.

  “Lafe,” she said, “I have thought about it a lot, too. I have t
ruly tried to begin from where we—from after you left off seeing her. I know it is true that men, that some men, have this need. It seems to me kind of like a drunkard needing whiskey, but I know that’s not fair. It’s more like being hungry. You can’t do anything about it, I guess, any more than you can keep from getting hungry and needing to eat. And I guess I do understand that. But what I can’t understand is that you make it my fault. I won’t let you begin again, you say. But you know that isn’t fair. You’ve begun again, only not with me. And you want that to be my fault. Maybe it is. Because I don’t satisfy you. But you always deny that.”

  “Because it’s false, it’s stupid! You know it’s untrue!” He spoke with passion, rounding on her; she saw tears shine in his eyes. “I love you!”

  “I guess you do, Lafe. But that isn’t what we’re talking about.”

  “It is! Love is all we’re talking about! Our love! What does anyone else matter to me, compared to you? Don’t you see, can’t you believe, that you’re my wife, my world? That nobody matters to me but you?”

  They had stopped and stood facing each other. Beside them was the high front porch of a frame house standing among bigger, newer buildings built since the earthquake. Tall shrubs leaned out over the wooden steps, seeming to offer them a place, a protection from the publicity of the street, as if this were the porch and garden of their own house. It was nearly dark, and the chill of the air was deepening.

  “I know you mean that, Lafe,” she said in a timid, rueful voice. “But lying makes love worthless. It makes our being married worthless.”