“Married. What do you mean George, really married?” “I mean she told me something utterly different.” “Different?” “She said this was a trial trip. That she and Maurice there weren’t going to — ah — experiment till they knew each other better. That she was really fond of Llewyn.” “Llewyn? What’s John Llewyn got to do with it?” “Did you meet him? Do you know him?” “No. Only here. I used to hear him lecture in America. Rather scathing. Browning in lavender gloves. It was he (Fayne tells me) introduced them.” “Introduced them — exactly.” “What do you mean, exactly?” “I mean it’s Llewyn that she’s in with. The other person is only a sort of mari — mari—” George’s French deserted him on most important occasions—“well, ah, complaisant. I mean a complaisant husband who isn’t really married.” “Married? What do you mean, really married?” “I mean that simply. I mean he never — ah I mean they—” “O George what do you mean? Can’t you just say it simply?” “I mean there ain’t no damn use your thinking you’re going to Dresden with them.” “But I’ve arranged everything. He’s even got my ticket.” “He damn well has — well, he can damn well keep it or—” what George murmured was lost in his velvet coat sleeve. He seemed to be biting at the cuff like a bad-tempered organ monkey in his little jacket. “George don’t eat your buttons. There’ll be food soon.” “O God damn, why did I ever come here?” “To see, as we all came to see, Fayne Rabb in her bride things.”
Fayne, it appeared, had thought she had kept them waiting long enough for she came in, drifted across the mirror that reflected (had reflected) Hermione and George Lowndes. Fayne looking odd in a fashion-plate bride veil and a fashion-plate bride-train and yet wasn’t it right and proper, though she pulled her veil off instantly and old Mrs. Morrison took it reverently, already seemed to love her. Fayne Rabb with relatives, in-laws, someone who was (someone said) related to a baronet and the rest of them, all of them who had so shone in Hermione’s little constellation cluster, looked odd, looked insignificant. George looked a little odd as if he needed to be explained and evidently someone had already thought that for old Mrs. Morrison was fluttering toward them “but my son tells me you have written such a work on Dante.”
Old Mrs. Morrison said it rather clearly, rather loud, in a loud clear voice so that the relatives (the one who was, it was whispered related to a baronet) might understand why George came in a velvet jacket. O yes this is Mr. Darrington (she had got that also, she was explaining Darrington) “not Kent, the Sussex Darringtons.” Darrington seemed to have more of a sense of humour or of proportion for he wasn’t having any of the patronizing chaff of the relation to a baronet. Hermione found that Darrington in spite of the chin that rose slightly too roundly Flemish from the collar, stood the test better than dear George. He knew the answers to all this, in spite of (or because of) the governor’s odd position. “Yes. Sussex. Beastly bog. Sheep and sky-larks sounding like corks popping.” Was this desecration or merely the right answer? Putting someone (the relation to a baronet) in his right place. People. Odd funny people to see about Fayne Rabb. They had dwarfed herself and George (“And which did you say she was engaged to?”) and Hermione was supposed to be engaged to one or both, George or Darrington, and her little cluster, her tiny constellation went dim and lustreless beside that conflagration that burned about Fayne Rabb. Fayne in her white robe, the moon. Her chin thrust out arrogant. Hermione had seen her look more beautiful though she liked her in that dress, it made the right marble lines and the arrogant full but firm little breasts and the line that the dress brought out of the perfect narrow hips. Hermione liked to see Fayne look right. Even the relation of the baronet must respect this.
“And this is her glove.” It was old Mrs. Morrison. She was holding it up like some holy relic while Fayne’s constellation seemed to be forming and tying itself about arms and tying bare arms about its own immaculate dinner jacket. “This is how they do things in America.” She was explaining the finger cut off at the knuckle. Odd thing, a white glove (when had she ever seen a long white glove of Fayne’s?). “The finger is cut off, you see—” Old Mrs. Morrison paused in rapture, “for the bride’s ring.”
The glove, the ring. They would be leaving in a few days. Now they were going in to dinner. Going in. Yes she would wait, going in. Who was meant to take her. But there was no arranging this thing. George had her, tucked her hand into his velvet crook of his velvet monkey jacket, “I’d beat it right now, Dryad. Only I don’t trust you with ’em. As your nearest male relation.”
“As your nearest male relative, I tell you this won’t do.” “But George, you have been arguing round and about it and it seems such rank futility. Fayne is married. I will have (if you are so dead-set on your conventions) a chaperone—” “Chaperone?” “I mean she’s married. Her husband asked me—” “Husband?” But they had been going on and on with this, it seemed they had been going on and over and around this for years, centuries. It seemed some barren desert and the sand, the hot arid arguments of George blasted, withered her. “Don’t you see? He’s that very famous lecturer.” “Lecturer be—” “Yes, yes, yes. But I mean even Eugenia, even my mother must know all about him.” “Did you ever hear of your mother going to Bruges or Ghent or Little Rock or Athens, Iohio, with any one on their honey-moon?” “Well, no — not exactly on their—” “Exactly.” George seemed to think this finished matters. Each time they got to this point in the argument, George seemed to think the matter finished but Hermione would begin and would continue. It seemed with that slim shape in beautiful white satin to recall her that George was some rankly gross little organ monkey with his wrong velvet jacket. They all looked right, especially the husband. Waiters would do what these people said. There would be no jumble and quarrelling over tips and people trying to bully one though on the whole people were inclined not to. But the feeling that they might. None of that. Fayne seemed to rise somewhere in the dark street, to rise a white star, a white folded lily. Her dress wound about her stern small figure like lily leaves, a lily-bud still budded. “Don’t you understand? They’re not really — married.”
When they got to this point of the argument, Hermione said, “but what difference can that make (if it’s true)—” and George answered “It wouldn’t. Only the whole thing has been cooked up for this precisely. It’s the Llewyn person that’s concocted it.” “But nonsense, Fay hardly at all knows him.” “She told you that, did she? She was anxious to impress me and told me something different.” “O George it’s all so mad and so unlike you. So unfair, simply.” “Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. But I’ll be there at the station.” Climbing weary stairs to her room, her lovely room that she had thought so beautiful, her room full of sound and colour, that in early spring had been filled with bell-notes like angels’ feathers ruffling wind, ruffling, little petals. . such childish images, such sentimental things and she had minded. She had slept in this room, wakened in this room, had letters pushed under the door, Darrington’s letters, all those faithfully funny little letters when he was being funny simply. “Well, I don’t mind Astraea, if it’s Zeus but no one else, I warn you.” She was to have Zeus for a lover. No one else. The Zeus-bed, the bed (so clean) that Darrington said might at any moment become Zeus or the Bull that carried off Europa. Letters under the door with her early tea, to be devoured in dim light sitting up in bed. Letters and jokes that had made cyclamen trail of colour in the dim room. “You Astraea, are that Rhodocleia—” I send you Rhodocleia for your hair. The room was different. All the trail, all the built up tenuous memoirs had been blighted. Can a white lily-bud blight with its devastating beauty all the garden?