Was she a spectator then? Was she to be always looking, watching, seeing other people’s lives work out right? Hermione seemed to herself suddenly forgotten. As old maids must feel turning out lavender letters, letters gone dim and smelling of sweet lavender. Was she then lost? It seemed suddenly that she must clutch, find something. Herself was it? “I don’t seem to understand this sudden fury of engagements.” “O it’s natural.” “I suppose so—” But it wasn’t. It was somehow queer and twisted. .
No, no. It wasn’t twisted. Walter wasn’t twisted. What had gone wrong, gone wrong with everything?
But there was one thing to hang on to. These letters that she had swept up from the hall table, the letters that she had picked up from the floor slipped under the door, the letters that she was taking so for granted, as much now of her routine of life as her early morning chocolate or her tooth-brush, became by some turn of events, something super-natural, sub-normal, something that must spell escape, regeneration, beatitude. For wasn’t that just what separated them, separated her now from this slightly ageing (poor darling she was only thirty but Hermione was taut with her youth’s arrogance) Shirley? Wasn’t it just that separated Shirley from Hermione? Shirley was odd and now in the light of the numerous mad engagements Hermione just a little pitied her. Thirty was getting on somehow, someway ageing. Yes, thirty must be an awful age, all done for, labelled, even Vérène saying in a new little, hard little manner, “but we all thought George was going to marry poor Shir-lee.” Vérène was little and tight and suddenly one had lost faith too in Vérène, too busy to care more than smile, lost in a dream, lost in a vague happiness that made her eyes fill with tears and it was too dreadful to be pitied by Vérène. But why pity them? Why pity Hermione? A white staggering Walter stumbled into the little boudoir where Vérène had asked her to wait as “I am seeing some people, dull ones, you know who offer their con-gratulations.” Hermione certainly didn’t want to sit through French visits of congratulation and Walter had escaped, fallen into a little chair that must, it seemed, break under his beautiful massive body, mopped his forehead. “God, this getting married’s horrible.” Had he said that to Vérène? But one expected a man always to feel like that. Then smiling, all alert as Vérène came in to tell them of another gift and the dress won’t be late, its, it’s— ravissante. O it was all ravissante. Ravissante. But God Hermione was like Walter in this. She didn’t want to be married, all satin like Fayne Rabb, all a snare, not even married and now Vérène who was already— But one mustn’t be horrible. Perhaps she wasn’t. Anyhow what did it matter and was marriage always a sham, a pretence like this was? Ravissante. But the letters that at first she had so taken with her tooth-brush, with her morning chocolate became by a turn of events, different. Letters were different now, might mean something. Letters in the light of Shirley just turned thirty might mean something. Must mean something. George at Shirley’s and George was vague like a magic lantern picture, all colour and no body. He didn’t matter. Even his little jibes didn’t any more matter. It seemed odd Shirley having him so much there, lost, it appeared, in intimate talk. Had George then come to explain, to make it all right, to get things on some kind of basis with this Shirley? But what anyhow did that matter? Letters that had meant nothing now began to mean things. “Streets. One goes through them with one’s eyes shut and one’s eyes open because there at Piccadilly Circus I bought some violets. Piccadilly. I go down Regent Street sometimes and do you remember the crocuses you wanted to see at Hampton Court? Only Americans see these things. But you just aren’t. Do you remember that vale in Thessaly? But of course you don’t. You have other things more precious to remember. Thanks for the Correggio. Funny but it is like me a little. Isn’t it hot now in Paris? O tell me what the places look like. Chestnuts. I may be coming over later if I get that reviewing of the Guardian. Jerrold.”
15
Darrington got his job, came over. Paris suddenly became (with the coming of Darrington) Paris. Space existed as space, Paris as Paris. Vérène someone little and tight that Jerrold had to be taken to see. Vérène being charming, in Vérène’s eyes it was all right now. Hermione was no longer (not that she ever had exactly been) in the same catalogue as “poor Shirl-ee.” Shirley herself being a little vague, lost talking on and off in bright spurts about Pater, about Landor. Darrington finding Shirley clever, sparks flying, George making a little mew-call from the divan in the corner. “Ain’t you ever, Dryad, going to speak to me again properly?” “I can’t see that I, George, haven’t.” “Whats the matter? Why so standoffish, Dryad.” In the light of Darrington’s arrival, she could afford to sting out at him, “don’t you think, George, it was a little, just a little — odd—” “Odd, Dryad?” “I mean if you were engaged all that time — to — kiss me.” “The odd thing is not to kiss you, Dryad.” “No. I don’t like it—” George had pulled her down beside him where he curled half hidden by the very grand baby-grand. “Listen Dryad darling—” “O George you might — you might have told me—” “Dryad developing a Puritan conscience—” “No. No that isn’t the argument. It doesn’t — seem — right—” “Well, Dryad as I never see my — ah — fiancée save when surrounded by layers of its mother, by its family portraits, by its own inhibitions, by the especial curve of the spiral of the social scale it belongs to, I think you might be — affable.” “Would you be affable if I were engaged to — to — Darrington?” “Are you?” “I didn’t say I was or wasn’t. Would you?” But George’s only answer to that was a crude drawing her toward him and the baby-grand with its baby-grand manner scowling its disapproval. O it looked hideous, servant-girlish as she saw them in the polished surface of the very grand baby-grand. A little distorted, a distorted vague Hermione pushing away, a distorted heavy George. It was ugly, a lacquer caricature in a polished surface. This was what love was, would be, a heavy ruffled shining and yet hard picture. Someone pulling at something, one or the other pulling, the other (or the one) pulling. Pulling and pushing and all the beauty of virginal line and the glory of independence shattered. Pulling, pushing. Grand piano. There. . even though it had been America and Her was caught, glued in her domesticity somehow had more line, more beauty, more reality than this thing. This lost, somehow, already smirched Hermione who was (in the highly polished surface of the baby grand) pulling away from a monkey in its velvet jacket.
Lillian Merrick. The school at Rome. No. This couldn’t conceivably go on forever. Eugenia with her many letters and these last ones, “We may be coming over so your father thinks you may stay. Be sure to see Mrs. de Leinitz and don’t let your summer things be shabby. You hadn’t enough last year and I can’t imagine how you’re managing. We love to hear all about your friends and your good times. I am glad Mrs. Walter Dowel has been so kind to you. How fortunate you are in knowing these brilliant people.” Brilliant people. Yes George in a red monkey jacket, Fayne with a white face painted like a circus rider, Fayne doing her little “stunt” balancing on toe on a white galloping stallion and holding two clowns (Llewyn and Morrison?) balanced on quivering buttocks. Not hers. The buttocks of the great white horse, and Fayne Rabb pirouetting in white face and white frilled petticoats, Fayne turned from Pygmalion with strong sturdy thighs and staunch young shoulders into a parody of womanhood. Doing her little prize stunt for the world to see. “But you can’t marry him.”