Now they were playing together. Candles on the Louis something or other table burning with round little blobs of light. The candle flames looked round blobs of light like dandelion puffs with the sun shining on them, not clear and cold or turned knife edges away from a breeze like in Walter’s studio. The very quality of people determines the way their candles burn. This was a discovery. The walls melted away and were broken and cut with heavily framed rather over-luxurious paintings. Certainly French school, good paintings, might have been in some little obscure room of the Louvre. Very late French. Vérenè’s father had a picture in the Luxembourg. This was really people who do things. Something in Vérenè that though she was little and dumpy couldn’t have happened anywhere else. How odd it was her notes on the out of proportion cello that were making the background for Walter though naturally you would think Walter with his height and his Byronic splendour would be making the background for her, too small, little legs really too short, chubby efficient little wrist. Vérenè must have climbed trees in the Pyrenees when she was a child. Vérenè, not the sort of child really of Hermiones preference and somehow wrong with Walter yet somehow filling in a gap as if lonely pine woods should be inappositely filled with rose trees or rambling peonies, great bushes, half wild, with too much sun on them and the sun above smiting down to the low bushes though really loving the pine trees. The shaft of Walter’s poignant allegrettissimo was the sun far up in trees and the cold water running in, swift, swift, but water from an iceberg. Walter was water from an iceberg running in and in and in and the cello keeping up its buzzzzzz underneath was the inapposite hummmmm of many bees, bees, bees, in chestnuts filled with rose spike of pink wax flower. Chestnuts, roses gone a little riot. Low bushes not one’s own kind of bushes. An odd jungle. Walter went on playing but he was quieter, more human, his face not strained, torn and white. Walter would go mad if he hadn’t this stretch of low bushes, rose coloured bushes and small compact low growing trees to rest in. Walters genius was high, high in the trees and Vérenè was actually reproving him like a child. Vérenè was older, she had told Hermione. “Did it matter” Hermione had asked, seeing that she wanted her to ask it. How could it matter? “I feel I’m too — old.” “How mad. How silly. How could he want you other?” “Did he say anything?” O now what was she to answer? Walter hadn’t said anything, only he had — friends up the road. “He didn’t exactly say — anything. It was — in — the — air.” Vérenè accepted it. “But he spoke of—you.” “Well that’s different. We hardly know one another.” “No. He said so. He said he wanted your advice. Do you know music?” “O, no, no, no, no, no. Mademoiselle Raigneau. I write — a—little.” Music. Writing. What could one say or how could one say it? “Don’t worry at me.” That was the only thing to say but Hermione couldn’t say it. Walter has, O it’s so odd, a sort of brain. I have too. That is even more odd. It’s the Gart formula and the Morse code between us. One couldn’t say that. She had hardly formulated it. But there was something of a butterfly rimed with frost between them. Little Vérenè would die at the first breath of frost. Walter (it was obvious) would kill her.
4
“You’re exaltée. You saw him alone.” “O, no, no, no, no, no. How could I see him alone?” “What’s easier? You tell us he asked you to meet friends of his. You don’t ask us to come along. You disappear at three, saying the friends asked you to early tea and hear music. You come home at — heaven knows what hour — and in Paris. Alone.” “I wasn’t alone.” “Well there you are. I suppose in all decency he would have to see you back at two in the morning.” “It wasn’t two in the morning.” “Wasn’t it?” “Was it?” “Well, you ought to know.”
Was it two in the morning? Odd white mist rising from a silver river, far and far and rather cold stars. Stars in France are oddly rather cold, taking on a sort of artificial glamour like diamond stars on kings’ breasts. “Isn’t it odd even the stars looking different?” “Stars?” “I mean over the river.” “So you stood and star-gazed on the Seine.” “Ever so long. He started telling me about Debussy. It was so odd. The gold fish, you know that thing he plays us and the castle under the sea, he knows all about them. Debussy says Walter is the only person who can play his music.” “So you talked of Debussy. And what else?” “I don’t know. Walter is making drawings, so exquisite of harps and things—” “Harps and things?” “O. I don’t understand. He thought I might. He said he thought I might.” “Understand what (at two in the morning) hanging like any street walker over the Seine parapet?” “Street walker? We did walk rather. He was making drawings of Egyptian harps and things, things like that in the Louvre. He believes he can hear things. Doesn’t really care about Debussy. He thinks it’s all written if one could only get it. He thought I might be able to get it.” “Get what? Cold in your head, I should imagine.” “Get — something — somewhere.” “This is interesting. So instructive, strangely illuminating.” “That is why he was at the Louvre the other morning. He loves Egypt.” “Egypt? The last thing—” “I thought so too. But do we understand? Egypt. He means the music. The harps. Odd pipes. He says voices too. He wants to hear the voices. He cares more about that than his music.”
But I care more about Greek than Egypt. Walter says it’s all wrong but that I personally am all right, limited — and don’t understand — couldn’t be expected to understand — the real things. Real? What is real? Candles reflected in a mirror and our clock doesn’t go here either. Clocks that go and clocks that don’t go. Most of them don’t. This one is like the one in the first room in Rouen before we left. Havre. Rouen. Did they really happen? “O you came to Havre. How funny of you.” Rouen. They didn’t ever seem to have heard of Rouen. “But we must go to Chartres.” Must they go to Chartres? “But were here now in Paris. How can we go to Chartres?” “Well, it was you yourself who suggested it in Rouen.” “That was before we came to Paris.” “Does that make any difference?” “Yes. No. Yes. I don’t know what I mean.” “I should think you didn’t.” “I mean how can anything one has suggested in Havre or Rouen, have anything to do with anything else of moment in Paris?” “Quite a speech for you. If Peter Piper ate the peck of pickled peppers then where is the peck and so on. Say it quickly, it will improve your manners.” “My manners are all right, Josepha. It’s your morals.” “Morals? I thought you thought yourself a nereid, a nymph, a cold and icy star and all shine and luminous quality that nothing could mar or befoul.” “Befoul? What an odd word, Fay.” “Yes. Isn’t it? Not the sort of word you get standing on the bridge at two in the morning asking the price of diamonds.” “Diamonds?” “Stars, was it? Well, stars. Diamonds. Both decorated.” “Who both? Walter and Vérenè?” “Walter and who — is that her name?” “I told you her name long ago. Vérenè Raigneau.”