Hermione

by Hilda Doolittle

  “Give-up-this house?” “Yes. Why can’t you and father just give things up, just scrap everything?” “Hermi-o-nie? Are you mad my dear child?” “No. Where is this all leading us? All leading you?” “I’m not at the age to be led, Hermione; your father and his work are more important.” “More important than what exactly?”

  Cruel, cruel, be cruel, be cruel. Drag tatters of red and blue and striped shiny black and stained cherry-coloured satin ribbons and beggars-tatters around Hermione. Dance and sing and whirl round and round on mad heels. George Lowndes is right precisely. “George Lowndes is right.” “In what exact particular?” “Why don’t you see? Don’t you see? This is the forest primeval. Why don’t you see—don’t you see? There are numbers fencing us in. We are being fenced in with numbers, one I love, two I love, three I love. Rich man, poor man, begger man, thief. I mean years are like a lead fence.” “What years Hermione?” “All years—what is the year anyhow? I mean what particular year is it? I come up against a lead block in my brain when I try to remember anything. Years are about our necks, years are making a fence, each year a bit more of a fence. George Lowndes is right precisely.”

  Drag tatters, a new garment, drag something distinctive and different about whirling mad limbs. Thought goes up and up in spirals like a water spout. “The whole vegetable garden was a mire. He ought to buy some pigs to root there. The sweet peas won’t come right again this summer.” This summer, what is this summer anyhow? The year, this year, makes a new row of spikey spokes to the fence that is hedging me in, things are too much, things are too much. Will I go on shelling peas forever? “Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief,” she counted green peas in a pea pod, “doctor, lawyer, merchant, priest.” “It isn’t merchant, priest, it’s merchant-chief.” “Well anyhow I’m going to marry a priest or a merchant-chief when I marry George Lowndes.”

  When I marry George Lowndes, when I marry George Lowndes. “And when exactly are you going to marry George Lowndes?” Eugenia spoke ironically, she was speaking up nicely, they were making snap and spark between them, George Lowndes the flint for spark and snap and steel sparks flying. Eugenia was never sarcastic. Eugenia was now sarcastic.

  “Don’t you know what marriage means, Hermione?” “Marriage means me whirling like a waterspout, swirling out of everything, whirling over fences, out, out, out of the forest primeval” (she achieved the exact George Uncle-Sam-in-whiskers voice). “Pri-meval” (she repeated it), “I am going to whirl out of this the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks bearded with moss and with garments green indistinct in the twilight. I am indistinct in the twilight. I am going to swirl out, out.” “With what are you going to swirl and how are you going to swirl and where are you swirling to?” Eugenia roused was spark to flint, flint to spark. Eugenia roused was being ironical. “I’m going to swirl to Europe. Doesn’t everybody go there on a honeymoon? Didn’t you go there on a honeymoon?” “How are you going? Has he any money?” “Money? I had—hadn’t thought of money. Yes he has a little money. A driblet (he calls it) from an aunt. Oh, we won’t have much. We won’t as a matter of fact have anything. He said we won’t need anything.” “You can’t live on nothing.” “I can live on sunlight falling across little bridges. I can live on the Botticelli-blue cornflower pattern on the out-billowing garments of the attendant to Aphrodite and the pattern of strawberry blossoms and little daisies in the robe of Primavera. I can live on the doves flying (he says) in cohorts from the underside of the faded gilt of the balcony of Saint Mark’s cathedral and the long corridors of the Pitti Palace. I can gorge myself on Rome and the naked Bacchus and the face like a blasted lightning-blasted white birch that is some sort of Fury. That face on a plaque that is some sort of Fury.” She was standing with the bowl of shelled peas under one arm, dramatically held aloft like some young hydrophyte.

  She held the bowl against one hip, stood with one foot elevated. Sunlight fell across the tossed mouse-hair of Hermione tucked short and unimpressive into a moiré band of narrow ribbon. Her face was a face of some young Pythian priestess. “And I can live on nothing.”

  “You can’t live on nothing. Your father won’t permit it. Do you think your father and I would have such inhumanity as to let you—to let you marry a man of George Lowndes’ reputation and marry a man of George Lowndes’ reputation on simply nothing?” “You mean if this man George Lowndes had a heap—had I mean a steam yacht and a million of dollars you would let me?” “I mean the thing is unsuitable and you’re mad altogether.”

  “Father. I am going to marry George Lowndes.” Carl Gart looked up from a superimposed bit of glass on a bit of glass that had already squashed flat a bit of alga. The thing, she knew, would look odd, unholy in its beauty under the microscope that one thin hand was screwing, adjusting to his vision. Carl Gart pulled away his eye from the microscopic lens and with an effort jolted himself back, with a jolt brought himself back to—“Eugenia.” “I’m not Eugenia, I’m Hermione.”

  Carl Gart saw a tall creature, his own daughter, with odd unholy eyes. Eyes shone odd and unholy in a white face. “I said father that I’m going to marry.” Carl Gart brought his mind by a superhuman effort to readjustment to the thing before him. He saw an odd fury-ridden creature with white face and flame-lipped face and a face where two lips were drawn tight almost like dead lips across a skeleton. He saw ridges in the face, fine bones beneath the face. “You’re—you’re thin, Hermione.”

  “I’m not any more thin than I always am, father. I’m no more thin than you are. We are thin, father.” A long skeleton hand was screwing a little round wheel; screw a little round wheel and I know you are great, I know you are as abstract and as beautiful as white bones bleached in sunlight. The mind of Carl Gart was white bones bleached in sunlight but the mind isn’t everything. “I’m going to marry George Lowndes, precisely.”

  Carl Gart readjusted the microscope to exactly suit his vision. His mind hovered like a desert eagle before his dual beauties. Like a desert hawk that sees here (this side) a skeleton of a dead horse and there (that side) some low flying swooping sister eagle, Carl Gart wavered. The mind of Carl Gart wavered before the vision in the lens beside him and this other vision . . . Hermione sitting here beside him, sister eagle, brother eagle, twin eagle mind, Hermione. Bertrand was patient but uninspired. Hermione has some odd way of seeing. . . she had failed him. “I mean—what were you saying, daughter?” He called her daughter like a Middle West farmer, like someone out of the Old Testament, like God saying daughter I say unto you arise. He called her daughter out of some old, old volume . . . she left the room . . . defeated.

  Mechanically she went to the telephone. Mechanically she rang up the operator, mechanically she said hello, hello, hello. Voice far and far at the end of a long wire, somewhere far and far a voice would speak to her, the voice would say, “You are one damn fool Bellissima, you can’t let me down this way” and she would say “But you must never come again George” and George would know she meant it and she was hanging on, hanging on to a tiny spar above the seething waters and George would utter commonplaces and the voice would shout back “This is the forest pri-meval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks.”

  The murmuring pines and the hemlocks would be murmuring all the time over the other side of the creek that was almost a river. The creek was spanned by the narrowest of bridges, an almost-sapling across which her feet would run, had run, would all her life run like a forest cat, like an older forest cat, like a cat gone thin and thinner and more gaunt and more dehumanized. For “I can’t marry you now, George” she would say for George, with his ribbons and his tatters of learning, was the one thing to save her from this dehumanizing process and she wasn’t strong enough to do it.

  Little bridge led from here to another world, a world where people lived in a soft aura of mist, of fog. George said in England there was no summer, no winter, just one low mist that was fog, that was a low horizon, no thunder and snow blinding her and heat and cold that
some Uncle Sam Gart sort of person brandishing sizzling lightning would force down, would force up to 200°, 300° or whatever it was Fahrenheit, to some odd centigrade she had forgotten. Super-boiling point, freezing below freezing on the thermometer. That is how we live here. On the other end of a thin wire, a thin telephone wire there was a long space of green grass and through it crocuses bloomed in February. In February, George said, the crocuses in Hampton Court made streaks of pale yellow like the flaming footsteps of some pale Aurora. George did not say like the flaming footsteps of some pale Aurora; Hermione said that saying hello, hello, hello mechanically.

  “But my dear child . . .” This was not George but a timbre, a little voice outside a tent, a shouting of a Punchinello outside a circus tent was in the voice saying, “But my dear child, I am so embarrassed and I do so want to see you.”

  The person that went with the voice was a stranger but the voice was not a stranger’s voice, it was the voice of George, it was George shouting outside a circus tent (flap) and she had known, Hermione had known, hanging on to a tiny spar that night with the crickets chirping and the heavy heavy pre-thunder drone of the tree toads, that she would find something at the end of that small wire. Bertrand had been on the porch . . . but Bertrand and Minnie were at Point Pleasant and the hall was full of sunlight now. The sun was setting. It was night (that night); the hallway had been a black rose open to receive her . . . “But my dear . . . how odd you must think me. I couldn’t come today. I do want so to see you.” A voice far and far, a stranger, a voice that went with George, someone else standing with George shouting “And I know how embarrassing these things are and I do want to see you.” Hold on, hold on Hermione to a thin spar that wavers above the sunlight slanting in sideways from above the treetops (you can’t possibly tell this person you’re not going to marry George) and the thin odd after-storm quality of a recrudescence of some spring bird calling now that premature hectic red streaked the first spray of red Virginia creeper. A voice far and far . . . “I know it’s unconventional, most, most, most unconventional but you know what my boy is like. The great lout of a boy and engaged actually . . . and will you, I know it’s odd but George says your people are barricaded with barbed wire. I do so understand your father’s work and I hate to interrupt you and will you—come—instead—to see me?” A voice far and far, the merest bee in a flower voice (I can’t possibly say that I’m not going to marry, she takes it so for granted).

  A bee in a flower, there was a bee shut up inside the telephone receiver, there was a murmur of the sea, far places, ships shut up in the telephone receiver. Hermione pressed the telephone receiver to her ear as a child presses a round shell. She listened as a child may listen to the murmur of far waters. There was the sea and far places and little seaports and sunlight slanting across a Tintoretto. Somewhere the sunlight now was creeping up across the ledge of a marble basin (they were all in the same sunlight) and in Rome the fountains played and played, falling, rising, rising, falling, silver and gold into some marble or some porphyry basin. Sunlight fell and Hermione held on to a tiny spar that floated above the top of things. She held on to a tiny spar that sank with her yet held her safe. She was connected with ships, with people sitting around a table and with Christ lifting a chiselled bowl embossed with Renaissance grape leaves. George like a showman was in that odd far voice, shut up in a shell voice, bee droning in a flower voice, “I have so much to tell you.”

  eight

  It was obvious that George’s mother, that the mother of George should be saying, “Now the first time he had his hair cut,” should be telling. “He went quite blatantly to the pantry and you know,” should be announcing trumpet voice of mothers that “George never would be careful of his stockings.”

  A mother faced Hermione and the mother said none of these things, and the mother had odd red hair that waved up from a forehead, odd wax luminous quality of forehead, oddest just-not-matching one-shade-darker eyebrows. She’s rather like a figure in a shop window, the sort of distinction you get from a wax figure wearing just the right clothes.

  “And do you care for clothes, I mean designing, thinking out your own clothes?” The mother of George was asking her equal to equal if she liked designing. “I mean your own clothes,” eyeing her a little askance, at the same time with patronizing approval; well it’s obvious, she thought it out herself, “those wide cuffs aren’t worn this year.”

  Hermione faced some sort of Isabel of Spain dressed up in a waxwork show, some sort of odd person who was part of the roar of George outside a circus tent saying “this is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks.”

  “Do you like the country?” The mother of George was asking “Do you like the country?” Someone somewhere else had said that, just that, “do you like the country,” but Hermione carefully mincing over a sticky little gateau couldn’t remember, everywhere everyone was always saying, “do you like living in the country” or “do you like the country.”

  George came in then. “Bella, most Bellissima, how do you like Belinda?” singing it, chanting it as George would do and looking up to face George with hair just not matching his mother’s hair and hearing her say “Ginger I hate that new name” and hearing George say “It so suits you in that bustle sort of new frock” and seeing a little image with uplifted hands on the piano, lift up strange little terra-cotta wrists toward an imaginary deity herself shout, “But that—what is that?” seeing the wall back of the little figure hung with heady blue flowers and twisted blue dragon as background for a tiny little figure.

  The terra-cotta made that hard clear note against the water-blurr of the length of Chinese tapestry, the long embroidered panel at the back of the piano. The tiny figure on top of the piano increased, decreased like something seen remote and far at the end of a field glass, like a tiny hawk poised with two exquisite wings against a mottled blue sky. The figure drew nearer, increased in size, became huge, a sort of huge odd beautiful naked tree branch, a sort of holm oak, Chersonese oak branch, a slim heavy trunk with two branching arms . . . the arms of a tree, the limbs of a man . . . and George was saying like a showman, “Now mother—do you get her?”

  “You’re so intense, so oddly intense, dear. You’re like George so intense about things. We live in an odd bustle, a crowded gaping universe,” she spoke as if she had read it; little distinguished waxwork making a little speech, a little speech made up for it by someone else but taking on distinguished quality when the wax mouth pronounced the wax words written for it.

  “You seem to have that odd way of—of—” she had forgotten her speech, was forgetting her speech, “of seeing” And Hermione just perceiving that the mother of George wasn’t angry with her, had not written her down, blunt, rude, crude, said, “But you—where did you get it?” And the mother of George said, “Oh, it’s a little thing we picked up. I don’t know where we got it. Anyhow my dear it’s only imitation—that boy praying—it’s only a little tu’penny-ha’penny” (she said tu’penny-ha’penny) “imitation of a late Tanagra.”

  “It’s not, mother, imitation of a late Tanagra. It’s the boy of—praying boy of—” and George too had forgotten. So coming back to it and the bazaar or the street or the steamer they had been on or got off, they went on arguing, waxwork and showman about a Greek boy praying.

  She saw it now. She saw it now. She would always be seeing what she saw now in a flash, in Saint Paul’s “twinkling of an eye.” Something that has been going (kaleidoscope whirl) star and whirl, frost flowers on a windowpane, rainbow prismatic frost flowers going (kaleidoscope) round and round in her tight head, became . . . static.

  I am standing here for someone has come in, more people have come in and “Yes, I am so happy to see you” and “Yes, I knew George” giggling “when he wore lace collars” and “Yes, you are the sort of person George would like” (whether it was a sting or a compliment didn’t in the least bit matter) and “How very kind of you dear Lillian to ask us” (how odd her name was
Lillian) and “Now won’t Miss Stamberg tell us about her concert” and people sitting and Miss Stamberg who was giving a concert or had given a concert or some sort of theatrical affair for some sort of committee (Hermione couldn’t follow) stood beside her by the piano and said, “You play, it’s so very obvious” and Hermione not taking the trouble to answer, gazed at the thing, looked at the thing, seeing the branch broken off a Chersonese holm oak, stripped of its leaves, a live thing, the praying boy with his two arms uplifted growing simply out of the grand piano.

  Her looked at the praying boy of whoever it was and things whirling in her head, making coloured patterns like frost flowers on windows, became static, but static in colour not simply frost flower but the thing in her mind (whirling pinwheel) became fixed, became static.

  “I will always remember this afternoon,” and someone took up words that she had just whispered—“Is it the first time you’ve seen your fiancé’s mother,” and fiancé and mother became linked forever with that boy with lifted hands standing on a piano, lifting his hands, holding on his lifted hands all of the universe, slender Atlas, holding and discarding, taking from her the burden of her intellect. . .

  His hands seemed to be lifted toward a heaven without edge or end or side or top or boundary. Into that heaven the vultures of her chained thoughts might now fly openly . . . “Vultures.”