“But I thought you were engaged to him and I thought you broke it off.” Was she engaged to him? Kisses arid but not here (in London) quite so full of desert heat and blinding wilting sand, met hers. Her mouth lifted and kisses bent and flowered upon it. The warmth of the tropic hybiscus red of George Lowndes was somehow tempered, somehow lost in this thing. The fog that drifted, that lifted, the late winter (or the early spring) bride veil of glistening, glamourous mist. “I love the mist, the fog. It seems I never was so happy.” Kisses nullified her, nullified her pain, there was no pain in her heart. She had forgotten simply. In London the desert sun was modified and the hyacinths lifted simply. Mist and glamour and the annihilating beauty. George Lowndes was beautiful. Here people did not laugh at George. People asked his opinion, a little reverently. It was funny watching people reverencing George. He had done a book on Dante and Provence and Renaissance Latin poetry. Georgio in London. His odd clothes not so odd, his little brush of a beard and his velvet coat and his cravats like flowers in mosaic of maroon and green and gilt and odd vermillion. George didn’t look odd though he looked more odd than ever. People seemed to understand, did not waste time commenting on his clothes. Said, “George Lowndes, odd fellow. . he has a flair for beauty.”
Georgio had a flair, had always had it. George being tender, thoughtful suddenly. “Getting enough to eat, Undine?” “O lots. Yes.” “I make a point of looking up old Mrs. Towers once a week to find out.” “Yes, George. She tells me when you drop in. She adores you.” “Had a room once years ago in my affluent days when we crossed with my damn aunt who just won’t pass out.” “O George. Don’t let poverty depress you.” “It ain’t my own exactly—” “Then whose is it?”
George seemed to be on the point of telling her something and the studio was empty. It was really empty and the floating veils of the floating laughter and people’s funny clothes that yet looked right in London and their hostess, Katherine Farr. Katherine Farr whom they admired and a little despised with her huge circulation, with her one or two novels a year, all good, all a little better than anyone else’s and yet not good enough for them. Katherine was so kind, had paused especially to ask her. People were kind. “I want you especially to wait on. I want you and George to stay and have some supper.”
Hermione had stayed with George in Katherine’s studio and it seemed perhaps the most beautiful of many, many beautiful studios, of many lovely afternoons that turned at a breath to evening and then turned (like Danaë in her sleep) to night. Mist and night and dawn took on significance. They held here personality, were people. Four o’clock was a person who entered somewhat briskly, five o’clock was announced in a hushed ambassadorial whisper. Six, seven and eight. Nine, ten and eleven. Was it the way clocks struck, muffled under mist like bells beneath sea water? The castle under the sea that Walter played to them in Clichy here took form, was something. People came and went but the people had less personality than hours, than things. Was it all haunted, here under the sea? England. Had anyone ever, could anyone ever have loved as she did?
“People come like hours and hours transform themselves to people.” “Which hours? Which people?” “Well that frump on the New Era for example it seems to me must be three o’clock. A lost hour, an hour that’s somehow lost, hasn’t a lover.” “Yes. Three o’clock is somewhat that.” “I think of Mary Dalton as somehow always just about eleven. Something hectic before mid-night. An illicit extra cock-tail (but that’s not the time for cock-tails). What do I mean? I don’t associate her with wine but she sets me shaking as if I had been upset, as if someone had offered me a crème-de-menthe instead of early morning tea.” “Rather neat that.” “Katherine Farr here with her solid novels and her income and her kindness seems some inevitable but somehow rather stern hour. Which is it? Is it nine and all the day before one at a hard desk?” “Poor Katherine.” “You could make her, do, into something odd, a little quaint. She might be sometimes the hours moles crawl (she seems like a mole with eyes) out thinking it is night but finding dawn. Just as dawn breaks yet hadn’t the courage of its flowering.” “Katherine on the whole is the best fellow of the damn lot.” “I didn’t say she wasn’t. Perhaps that’s just it. I want her to like me. I feel somehow she doesn’t.” “But she goes out of her way. Asked you to stay this time.” “Yes, isn’t that a little guilty complex? She doesn’t really like me. She looks at me and thinks why don’t I like the little American Her Gart? She looks and wonders. She sees I’m not very old nor very horrible. She can’t say I’m actually a viper. She wants some excuse for her slight bewilderment. I’m apparently a nice girl and I’m living alone in Portman Square and it sounds a bit fishy about my expecting (perhaps) my mother soon to join me. She thinks I’m nice and I don’t do things nice girls do. This for instance.” “Katherine doesn’t know you do this.” “Yes, she does. Everybody does. Somehow everything one does here is everybody’s property. I know and feel she must know. Why did she ask me to stay on here with you?” “Perhaps I asked her to.” “Does that alter it? Would a nice girl do it?” “Well we were — I mean — we—” “We were engaged. Whats that got to do with it? Its just the one reason according to ordinary standards I shouldn’t do this.” Famished and forgetting she lifted hyacinths to George’s kisses.
Drugged and drunk she said she had forgotten. Drugged with the hybiscus colour, with the odd tremors that the clock made striking, striking. Clocks were always striking and the colour of the mist was different. She was sure that each vibration of each clock sent shivers, tremors through the mist. Little paths of light. The bells of Saint Clement’s. Lemons. Not lemon light, silver rather, those high bell notes. Notes, bells. . who is it in me, what is it in me, hears bells, notes? Morse code. . Gart formula. . Walter could you tell me? Bells made forms, notes, pictures were notes and bells made pictures, Walter said, so that he could play when she made a picture (he said) with the two candles against the grey-grey of the Clichy studio walls. . suppressed, something suppressed that sees the very ring and quiver of the clock notes make strange pattern. O I am so happy. George. . and people came in after supper and the candles make exquisite daffodils in the great brown studio. One had even understood Katherine Farr in that light. Katherine. Maybe someone, someone somewhere called her Katy when she was little. Katy did Katy didn’t. She was rather like a Katy did, small and compact, some little busy insect, chirping, scraping music out of its legs, not bird music, not frog music even, but music of a sort (everybody’s music of a sort) understanding other people. Yes, Katherine did understand, was not surprised when she had come back, found Her crouched low before the fire. Nothing mattered. Her had done nothing to matter. After all, George’s hybiscus red did make a warm coal glow somewhere in her heart. She had a heart. A red heart. Someone, everyone (who was it?) said she wasn’t like Undine as she had no heart. Who said that? Darrington. But Darrington didn’t matter. It was a pity about Darrington as she liked the Greek books. Darrington who helped her poetry. But what was poetry? George was right, had long ago, been right. You are a poem though your poem’s naught. Why should she have questioned. Striven. George would write for them both. No. She wasn’t any more engaged. Was she? Wasn’t she? Did it really matter? It was something George gave her here in London. The silver of the mist tempered the heat of Georgio. She didn’t any more care though of course she couldn’t marry him. “But you can’t of course marry him.” No, of course, she couldn’t. Ringing, ringing downstairs. She supposed she’d have to put on the lights, tidy her hair, too late to change. But that didn’t matter. People were polite, didn’t stare. People were all right. Even old Mrs. Towers since Lady Prescott (Delia) came to see her. Delia said the place was funny, frightfully “army.” What did “army” mean or “army” matter? Delia said this was and laughed to people in chairs all about, in tiny islands. Bridge. People being discreet. Lady Prescott.