“Killing and not-killing have nothing to do with it. The letter made it all clear. She had been in love with Walter for some years. She couldn’t go on any longer with it—” “It isn’t true. It’s all lies. No one of us is in love with any one of us. What is love? A circus dancer with a white horse balancing to a fanfare on the back of a black stallion. Circus dust, spectators. What is love? A monkey in a velvet jacket reflected in the back of a polished hand-organ, embracing a white satyress. What is love? A parody — smoke wreathing between lilac bushes, another in a crinoline or a bustle, a dart catching a feather in a gallant hat, a march, a drum, a beating, a forgetting, a memory, I send thee Rhodocleia for thy hair—” “Astraea.” “What is Astraea? What are we all? You are the only one that said a kind word to her—” “Astraea, you exaggerate. You were very nice to her, always.” “Nice? Sheer nice as anyone might have been nice. I, with my flair for rightness, my spirit, my wings. I the thing that Walter said drew out his music, the nymph, the Dryad. I the Spirit you all talk about sat and watched another topple — topple — fall—” “Astraea. This is all wrong, morbid of you.” “I have lost faith in the thing they loved so. Walter saying I drew music out of him. What is music to a soul lost?” “It isn’t lost. Her soul isn’t—” “Plato says we are servants of the gods. No servant can neglect his work. To kill oneself is to drop out, lacking in service.” “The gods won’t look hard on her, Hermione.” “Maybe not. It’s me, I’m thinking of. What have I been doing? Where have I been? Wandering in a maze. Hermione this. Hermione that. An angel, a saint, a poet, a child. I am none of these things.”
“You are all of these things.” “I’m tired of this. I’m sick of my own attitude. What is Fayne Rabb beside this thing? It was so clean. They said she had planned it all so carefully. She left money for the maid’s taxi fare, just the right amount so that she should rush out with that letter to the Dowels. So clean. Not anything horrible. So clean under her breast. All gone. That is true love. That is true marriage. Fear gone. A white bullet—” “Hermione. This thing has upset you. Hermione. .”
Voices down the street. Voices down the hall. Fatigue so great that she held her head up under it, above it like a drowning man gasping, gasping for breath. Herself, the immaculate image, the saint, the spirit, had been shattered for her. Forever. A white bullet had so shattered it. Intuition and fine feeling had not been fine enough to sense this. The very proximity of this other spirit. The very nearness of this authentic sister, tangled in a worse web than she was. Herself had wound about herself blinding herself to the soul’s unhappiness about her. Life had been cruel she had thought. It was herself simply who had been stupid in being so deceived by sheer appearances. Fayne on a white horse led the fantastic circus. Parade round and round a room, parade round and round a world. The whole world was girded by this fantastic procession. Monkeys in velvet jackets jibbered at her. None of the world escaped them. Venice, Prado, Spain, Holland, Dresden— Names came and went like lights flashing on a white screen. Was there no reality in all this? Names and fantastic backgrounds. America, the wilderness, the rockies. How could Americans cope with all this? How could they cope with so much having so many racial strands and counter-impulses? America had killed her.
“I know she was alone too much. She had got away from home. She was, we thought, so happy.” She had got away from home. Shirley had escaped and this happened. Would this happen to them all, to all of them? Darrington might help her to work and she could have something, claim something out of all this. Spain in the Californias. Strains of Dutch and Latin in their make-ups. Coming back to Europe. Flaming out like marsh-lights, brilliant with no roots. Here and there, trying to get lost. Henry James lost in Sussex marshes. One after another but she wouldn’t be lost. Henry James wasn’t really lost. Not Henry James, not Whistler, not Sargent. Lost yet not lost in London.
France was a book of beauty and of terror. Rising up to the highest attainment, Walter talking of notes in the air, beyond the air, harps. It was Walter who had killed her. .
PART II
1
Darrington came across the room. Candles made a smudge in the distance. How far away was the other side of the room? It wavered and fell. It fell and wavered. Perhaps next time it really would fall down. “Jerrold.”
Darrington came across the room. He sat on her bed, their bed. She hadn’t really gone to bed, just piled the cushions behind her back and sat up and sat up and listened. Darrington came as he had always come at her voice, coming toward her, his head bent forward, his yellow French book half open in his hand. “Jerrold.” “Darling.” Darrington called her darling, had always called her darling, had been calling her darling forever. “Where — am I?”
“You’re right here, here right enough. Thank God we got you out of that damned nursing home.” “Yes. I forget. Keep forgetting. The funniest thing was when they stood at the end of my bed and told me about the crucified—” “Hush. Hush darling.” “Jerrold.” “Darling?” “Are there any men left, any at all in the streets, not, not in khaki?”
“Keep quiet. Don’t talk. Don’t talk about it, darling.” “I can’t think. Can’t think about anything else and yet all night (is it night?) my head has been going round and round. You remember that girl I almost forgot.” “Which girl Astraea?” “That American girl that crossed with me — when just was it?” “You mean when you first crossed, two years before the war.” “Yes two years before the war. Where was it?” “Where was what?” “Someone, something got — killed.” “Hush darling — don’t talk about killed.” “I don’t mean the nursing home. I don’t mean the horror of the nurses. I can talk of that now. I don’t mean their taking me into the cellar — while — it — was happening. I know they took me into the cellar. I know the baby was dead. I know all that. I’m not afraid of talking about it. Really Jerrold.” “Hush. Hush darling.” “I mean long ago, something happened long and long ago — the other side of a chasm. Someone. Something. A silver bullet—” “Don’t talk of bullets darling.”
“Read Browning to me.” “What just do you want dear and the room’s too dark; can’t turn on the electricity till the raid’s over.” “Read anything — your voice — it was always your voice — sometimes in the worst times, I hear your voice. I wouldn’t have minded if they hadn’t been so horrid to — you—” “Do keep still. Don’t fidget. Now rest there.” Darrington pulled the cushion to a flat plateau, lifted her by the shoulders, pushed her into the down cushions, “now don’t talk.”
“What shall I read, darling?” “That thing about Fortù—Fortù, was it? The Englishman in Italy, you know what I mean. It takes me back to Sorrento, to Ana-Capri. It makes things come right. Gaudy melon flower. I said those things over and over and over before — it — before it arrived, I was going to say. But it didn’t. I used to think I would keep all Italy, the melon flowers, the gold broom above Amalfi. It wasn’t England I loved having it. How could I have loved England? God — God — God—” “Stop talking. . stop. . stop, darling.” “I can’t stop talking. I’ve been quiet for weeks, all those weeks in that filthy place. They didn’t kill me anyhow. Their beastliness at least made me glad for one thing. I was glad, so glad it was killed, killed by them, by their beastliness, their constant nagging. The Queen brought Atkinson’s eau-de-cologne. But would eau-de-cologne mean anything to anyone who was having a baby, having I say a baby, while her husband was being killed in Flanders? They got exaltées, those nurses and their cheeks flushed with ardour and they said. . O Mrs. Darrington, how lucky for you to have your husband when poor Mrs. Rawlton’s husband is actually now lying wounded. . and Mrs. Dwight-Smith’s husband is MISSING. Their cheeks went pink with almost consumptive joy and fervour while they drove and drove and drove one toward some madness. Why isn’t Mr. Darrington in Khaki? What is khaki? Khaki killed it. They killed it. Italy died and eras amet and I send you Rhodocleia for your hair and swiftly walk o’er the western wave, spirit of night. Italy died with it— Why isn’t Mr. Darrington in khaki? Good old ecstatic baby-killers like the Huns up there. What is khaki?” “Hush hush—” “Another gun. Perhaps we’ll go this time — read Fortù.”