. . That odd spectacle would in no way leave her. That spectacle of George heaving a summer overcoat toward a departing train, pronouncing, “sic transit gloria mundi.” Hermione didn’t want so simply to see George, to dine à trois with George Lowndes and another, someone who wore the right clothes, lived in the right street, had the right food, hung the right pictures, boasted even the very right piano, the baby-grand taking up more than his share of room, making the rest of the room all the more cosy and compact for his unwieldly baby bulk and the bulk of the things he stood for. Hermione recalled her little visit there with Shirley, talking about something, talking about nothing, wondering if she would be too late for the Rabbs at the little Rue du Four crémerie where they always had their supper. Rue du Four, the wrong side of the river, not caring what the girl had said or who she was, having come because George sent her for some reason, making polite adieux, writing that she couldn’t come again, was called suddenly to London. All the same it was part of that wrong side of Paris life that now escaped her. Escaped her? But it never did. Little rows of communicants were passing in the streets, set there to remind her. Little rows of little girls with long trains and veils. . God, God, what a farce and she wasn’t (George said so) even “married.” Bride’s veils, muguet and the parks a paradise of chestnuts. That year the pink and rose shell chestnuts broke across her like shells from some forgotten paradise. Shells from some sea. Aphrodite. But Fay wasn’t. O if she only were, if she only had been, if Hermione could have fallen at her feet, O Fay, you’re grown up now in your bride things. . a lovely mother. O Fay, let me be your first child. But she hadn’t. Couldn’t. But it wasn’t true, couldn’t be true what George had told her. How she hated George Lowndes. Why had she anyhow presumed his tale true? Fayne carrying on a “vulgar intrigue” (it was George’s phrase) with this Welshman, this fascinating Llewyn that they all knew, had known (but O so distantly) in Philadelphia. Llewyn with his Oxford affectation and his brilliant pronouncements on literature. “Browning in lavender gloves.” It gave one a new idea, destructive, dominant, domineering. Fancy Fay having met him by accident, somewhere (where?) and his falling for her. Little Fay rather wistful with her hatred (her then hatred) of all men. “But you can’t marry him.” But it wasn’t true. George was vulgar, base. George had betrayed her. It was George who was vulgar.
No, she mustn’t stay here. Mustn’t go round and round things and throwing herself on the bed to think things out. No. She mustn’t. What should she do? Where should she go? Not the Louvre. Lovely corridors and Fayne’s pronouncements coming back. Why did they all make such amazing statements, nothing sacred, they were all so brilliant. Pictures, statues, poems, people. They made their brilliant statements. Browning in lavender gloves. They had everything at their finger-tips, such very clever people. Clever, even George couldn’t stand up to them. They chaffed George. They found fault, quite sternly with his Dante. Poor old George. They hadn’t spared him, frayed his blatant banner of scholarship, ripped it to pieces with their brilliance. O that was the right setting for Fay. Fayne Rabb was as clever as any. She was far more brilliant. Fayne with her conflagration. No, no, no, no, no. Fay was something different. O why do my tears flow like some damned leak in the roof? Not proper tears just coming on and on and making one uncomfortable. Am I ill then? Its being alone and muguet hateful in a tumbler like those striped orange lilies they had bought at the Quai aux Fleurs and never enough tooth-brush tumbler to put flowers in. Muguet. What made her think of Shirley? Seeing her that day (some ten days ago?) when she first bought muguet. Muguet. The first of May. She must go and see her.
14
“Thank you so much. Yes I do like lemon. Yes in England everyone has milk, never lemon. They say it is so Russian. No. I simply stayed as I had friends there. Yes. I know. Yes.” The baby-grand strutted forward, nosed with his baby-grand grand manner into the very table, dwarfed them, the chairs, the book case crowded with untidy layers of books, magazines. Shirley had everything. It was something to have everything. Shirley was very kind. Quite kind. It had been rather casual, bouncing up the stairs, rushing in at tea time, but she was alone, said she was glad to see Hermione. “You see I seem to know you, knowing people that you do.” “Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. What people?” “Well there’s George Lowndes.” “O, of course, George Lowndes.” Did this Shirley love then George? George kept coming up, coming back. “That’s a portrait of him.” Shirley was waving a tea spoon (a Florentine little lily on a disproportionate stem handle) toward a portrait. “O yes, I saw it when I came in.” George had all the while been squinting slightly at her back, squinting ironically, with hand lifted and a more than ever ornate vermillion and speckled gold mosaic cravat. “I told George I’d keep it here though it’s really his, belongs to him.” “O yes.” But Shirley needn’t go out of her way to explain. Why did she explain. Did people accuse her of things too? Had she kissed George, had George kissed her? Did people lift well-bred eye-brows and smile and say in well-bred voices, “O I had no idea things had gone so far with George.” Is that why Shirley liked her, wanted to talk to her? Did Shirley really like her. Wasn’t it that Shirley wanted to find things out, was trying? But Shirley seemed not so much to want to find out things as to (with an interrogation) impart them. “And what really is the girl like hes engaged to?”
“Engaged to? But I didn’t know he was engaged.” Hermione had been under a vague half-impression that it was she herself who was vaguely half-engaged to George Lowndes. “O. But I thought he’d told you.” “O no. Never.” “But how terrible of me. He wrote me in the strictest confidence.” “O but—” O but. It seemed somehow rather odd now. If George were engaged, really engaged, he should have told her. Had he told her? He mumbled, murmured, had a way of hurling sonnets at her and asking her opinion. Was that his way of telling? Had he told her? She remembered one evening, the most beautiful, it seemed now, of all the many beautiful London evenings. But London wasn’t real, London was a dream. London had been destroyed, marred, blasted. The castle beneath the sea, the very sea, the little Mermaid, all the dream and half-mystery, the glamour of the drift and drift and the cold annihilating beauty. London. Where was it then in London? Hyacinths were reaching up to kisses. . kisses that at last hadn’t hurt her. George was speaking to her—“my damn aunt just won’t pass out.” “O George, don’t let poverty depress you.” “It ain’t my own exactly.” “Then whose is it?”
Had that been his idea in asking Katherine Farr to ask her to stay on alone in her studio before supper? Was that what he wanted? Just to tell her. “O George didn’t exactly tell me but he hinted.” “Well, I thought it odd. He said, always said he was your nearest relative—” “Male relative.” “Male relative. I thought from that you were quite intimate.”
Had George then deceived her? You don’t kiss people like that, you don’t kiss them at all if you are “engaged” elsewhere. Engaged, what an odd idea. The whole place was mad, obsessed. And Shirley now continued. “And Walter.” “Walter?” “I believe finally the two parents have consented. You know marriage in France is a grave ceremony—” Shirley was speaking blankly to a blank wall. The black undeviating surface of the baby-grand. “He gave me lessons for a time. Harmony—” Harmony. Vérène had said once, “Walter gives lessons in har-mony to American girls, my pupils.” “Are you then a pupil of theirs?” “Theirs?” Hermione looked into almond shaped odd eyes that were almond shaped no longer. They were wide, staring, glassy like a crystal gazer’s. “Theirs. Vérène’s.” “O little odd Vérène. No. Not from her. No I never had much faith in Vérène save as a house-wife.” “House-wife” “Well isn’t it that exactly? Its so exactly right and she’s so pretty. Walter needs a mother.” “Mother. Is she pretty?” “Well. I thought so.” “Did you? I can’t say that I ever thought her — pretty. I think she’s funny and she helps out his music—” “Does she?” “O I don’t know. I don’t know anything of music.” “Walter said you listened.” “O—that—”