6
“You’re odd here, you’re a great success here, but you don’t dress right.” “No.” “I said I don’t like that grey chiffon, it’s too nun-ish. Maybe all right for Philadelphia.” “Yes.” “I said you have to have more body to your clothes. Colour.” “Yes.” “Yes. No. Yes. Have you heard a word I’m saying?” “No. I mean yes.” “Yes, I mean no. What in Hell’s name do you mean?” “I mean really, George, does it at all really matter?”
“Well, I as your nearest male relative—” George didn’t like her. Not like her as he did in Eugenia’s little morning room that he had said (with a snort) might almost be in Chelsea. “You don’t like me here, George?” “Wh-aat?” “You don’t (in London) like me.” “I didn’t say that. I think you’re in bad hands. You keep bad company.” “Bad company — Delia?” “Delia. No not delicious Delia. Delia is Hera after a cure. Juno with all the grandeurs and no fat. Delia is the immortal Artemis garbed in violet, in the violet-woven veil of Aphrodite. Delia is a second Helen come to judgment—” “You do understand, Georgio.” “That’s what I’m here for, Dryad.” “Then who, what? What bad company? Don’t you like that Dalton woman that Delia asked to meet me?” “May I ask why Delia asked the Dalton to meet you, Dryad?” “I don’t know. It happened. The Dalton (her name is Mary) wrote Delia saying she was so unhappy—” “Again?” “Again? What do you mean again?” “I mean that Dryad. Why the Dalton?” “I told you George. She’d been writing Delia.” “O well, I suppose the most discreet must have their indiscretions. The Dalton’s dippy. Otherwise amusing.” “Dippy?” “Her husband it appears tries spasmodically to lock her up. Bug house you know. Mad.” “Is the Dalton crazy?” “Well not any more apparently than the rest of them. She’s a little cleverer that’s all. When a woman in that set, is clever (brilliantly clever) the husbands take quick action.” “Whatever do you mean, George?” “She writes. I mean doesn’t. She could if she wanted to. She’s afraid of dear Freddie or Teddie or Algy. (Morris I think his name is.) She’s afraid if she gets any further forwarder, he will descend and cop her.” “George. You’re so crazy. Yourself. Can’t you tell me?” “I am. I have been.” “Delia says—” “Never mind what Delia says. What do you think?”
“I don’t know what I think dear George. I saw her face over the back of a Chesterfield and hated her.” “Hated her? Why Dryad?” “I don’t know. Something she said about Walter.” “What Dryad?” “She said she wanted to turn and turn a steel knife in his heart and say now you feel.” “Rather neat that. Old Forgeron makes one angry.” “You angry?” “O well not angry, Dryad. Helpless.” “Helpless?” “Well not so much helpless as hopeless. Abandon hope all ye who enter here. The cold irradiance of the well-cut glacier.” “Well-cut?” “Yes. Perfectly tailored. The glacier à la mode.” “I suppose that’s funny. The sort of thing all you people repeat to one another. It is rather.” “Thank you, Dryad. But I started saying I don’t like your friends.” “But who George? And why don’t you?” “I mean her Dryad. The She of the piece. She’s done things to you. You’re not the same. Altered imperceptibly. Not to notice. But I notice.” “Wh-aat, George?” “You and she would have been burned in Salem for witches—” “O George, George, you said that long ago. . and that was why everything happened. Don’t go on saying it.” “Burnt.” “You shouldn’t have — you shouldn’t have. You should never have said that, George Lowndes. You might have helped her.” “Help her, Gawd Almighty — Orpheus or (who was it?) Orestes rends assistance to the Furies. She has a face like a Burne Jones fury. Have you seen them? In one of your eternal galleries. Not the Tate. I think the South Kensington—” “Yes. I’ve been there.” “Where haven’t you been Dryad?” “I don’t — know George.” “Dryad. Piqued again. Or peeved merely?” “I don’t know, George. I hoped you’d — help even now, you might help Fayne Rabb.”
“Then Fayne, it’s merely a matter of finances?” “That chiefly. It always has been. We would go without anything to eat (properly) for two days and then grandame would descend on us with out of season hot-house grapes. That’s been our life.” “Well, I can see your point. But as far as Clara is concerned you’re making a mistake. You’re grown up. She is. She is petting you, keeping you back. She is arresting your development. You are a case particularly poignant, of arrested development.” “My dear Dryad (I believe that is what they call you) who’s been talking then?” “No one. No one in particular. It’s in the air. I know what I mean. I knew in Philadelphia. You expected me to stand up to Eugenia. I told you I had done it. You spoke patronizingly of Eugenia, patronized my effort as if it had been nothing. I tell you it broke my heart to break hers.” “Don’t talk that way. Your mother has your father. Your brother.” “That makes no difference. That made it worse in a way. I was the only girl.” “So am I. I am the only one at all, anyway.” “I know that and I wouldn’t go on this way, have gone on at all like this if you hadn’t started it. Don’t you remember that night in Paris—” “Nights in Paris. Nights o’ Paris. O Paris—” “Don’t be cynical, servant girlish. Paris is, has always been Paris. Athens rather. Paris brings one’s mind to a fine point of illumination, of discrimination. One can see and feel and act all at once in Paris. In Paris one is one whole being, mind, body and soul as the Greeks were. In Paris I saw clearly. So did you Fayne Rabb.” “I told you in Paris to harrow you, to whip you up to one of your divine frenzies that I hated Madre.” “You meant it, Fayne. You haven’t the courage to be straight. I hated Eugenia, loving her. But we can’t creep back into our mothers, be born again that way. We must be born again in another way. You must cut, as it were the cord—” “Umbilical cord to be exact.” “Yes, that simply. Here is your chance. You will never get another like it. I have kept, saved almost all they gave me. My father has been generous. There will be nothing wrong, nothing outré even in our staying on here—” “Madre has her school work. She has her job. If she misses the late autumn sailings, she’s done, dismissed, finished, over.” “That’s all right. You’re only making excuses. What anyway can you do? You only really drag her back. She’s not old. People like her. She can go on, work toward coming back here. Come back here in the summer.” “And you Beautiful? What of you Beautiful?” “I? I can’t think, see — anything except you, me and you in two or three little rooms. I see Delia Prescott and George and Walter even coming to tea with us in our little rooms. Perhaps little rooms in Chelsea. The boats, the river. Boats hooting up the river. Down the river. Sea-gulls. Do you remember our wild ecstasy when the sea-gulls wheeled and screamed about the Nereid? And it was land then, they said only a few hours off. Do you remember the very poignant calling, screaming (or is it whistling) of those sea-gulls? But you do Fay. You do remember Fayne Rabb. It was about those gulls that you wrote that poem. You wrote about them.” “I did, Beautiful. I know all that. I’d like to stay. You don’t know how hard it is for me not to.” “I do know.” “Come back with us Beautiful.” “How can I? What good would that do anybody? I’d only have to hurt Eugenia again. I’ve plunged in the dagger.”