Hermione’s elbow kept the bed quiet for a moment. The bed for a moment, was forced, by her effort, to rest firm and four-footed on the floor. “But Madame Dupont, I never said there was.” “No, Madame Rabb tells me. You think you are suffering from the effects of the boat. You are not.” “I don’t think anything—” “Don’t interrupt. You think, owing to erroneous impressions, that you, having kept well on the ship, are now ill. The people who thought they were ill on the ship are now well. Is this some sort of punishment for my arrogance, you may well think. But you need not. God in his goodness will eradicate this error from your mind—” O God, Hermione would begin to laugh and laugh and laugh. Her elbow could not now keep the bed from wobbling. The bed itself capered on one foot, on three feet, up — down— “O, O, thank you.” If she had known Madame Dupont was a Christian Scientist she would not have wasted Eau de Cologne on her on the boat. If she had so known. Should Hermione remind Madame Dupont of those sunny, dazzling, sick sterile days when everyone said that they would so much rather the boat went down? Or those terrible intense days of baffling salt-whipped storm when there was no one to talk to and only she and Fayne Rabb had survived the mêlée? She had not then said to Madame Dupont “you are not sea-sick” though Madame Dupont kept on now insisting “you are not land-sick. There is, I assure you, nothing wrong. Mrs. Rabb, who persists in error, says you had better rest here. We are going out for lunch. But I persist in this. You will be all right for dinner.”
“Brrrr sous la livre — Brrrr sous la livre” went on and on and on. A raucous voice persisted that something was some number of sous (brrrrring over it) the livre and what was a livre anyhow. Livre, livre. A book. A book. It was all a book. They had wandered out of a world into a book. They were dream people and they were wandering in the pages of a book. They were like black flies and they crawled across the print. . no, it was not print, it was a hard cobbled street winding a little and leading to a shrine. The street climbed the hill and the cobbles hurt the thin soles of Hermione’s still sea-worthless feet. Climbing the street toward a door — a cathedral was it — the voice going on and on making long echoes like some voice “off” in some obvious stage set. The scenery was worn out, obvious. This was never true, could never have been. Livre. “But a livre is a book isn’t it? What is a livre anyhow? Where is that hateful old Dupont creature? She might make herself useful for once. But what a mercy anyhow she’s left.” She was gone, for the nonce (shopping again?) Madame Dupont, cheap mourning and another half-mourning hat (still cheaper) with a spray of artificial half-mourning wheat sheaves on it. They had themselves bought hats, Hermione and the two Rabbs, were now wearing them, Fayne and her mother, Clara they now called her, Clara Rabb and Fayne Rabb and Hermione had bought hats, wonderful hats, soft about their faces, without linings, not so expensive — sans doublure — no, the bigger one. Madame Dupont had helped them, helped them buy exquisite wide straw hats for something about three francs, very extravagant Madame Dupont had said, harrowing the dumpy little milliner’s assistant who might have been Boule de Souife come to life only she had such odd tobacco coloured eyes such white skin, somehow dumpy but with white skin like a magnolia. A common girl in a little back-water of a shop, draper’s assistant and the masts of the boats showing through the uneven squares of the narrow window over the counters of cheap calico and bunches of artificial cherries and plum and magenta ribbons. Boule de Souife. Hermione had whispered “Boule de Souife” and Madame Dupont had dropped the bunch of magenta bignonias she had almost bought instead of the half mourning wheat sheaves to exclaim, “what, but Mademoiselle, you don’t know what you’re saying.” “I wasn’t saying anything. Only remembering—” “You picked up strange ideas in your French studies. You seem to have been oddly coached.” Coached. Where had she got that word? Her husband the new American-French one, had learnt his English in Oxford. Coached. “You mean — taught?” “Taught. Yes. What did I say?” “I don’t know — please don’t be upset, Madame Dupont. It’s France simply.” “I can’t see that there’s anything for you to get upset about in France. You have your good home and your good parents to return to.” Why must she so spoil everything? Black beetle, frog, horrible black beetle French-American frog, getting the best you can out of everyone, out of every country. Sending me back or wanting to. “Can’t you see, frog, black beetle” Hermione almost shouted at her “that I adore your country?” Country. Country. Boats bumped up narrow salt canals and there were women in little flower bonnets, white wings to their bonnets like gull wings. Bretons, Madame Dupont told them.
Havre. This was Havre, Havre. Havre. Small boys looking like thin anaemic little girls dressed up in tight short hideous unbecoming little trousers, with curls (some of them) shouting after them, “Engl-eesh. Engl-eeesh. Beef-steak.” “O Clara they think we’re Engl-eesh.” The little boys had persisted and shouted until Hermione had had to turn, stick her tongue out at them, thank them, Messieurs for their hearty welcome to their beautiful patrie where in America they were all taught French children were so polite vous savez till they disappeared and the market was a mass of wine coloured carnations, what were they? “O yes, thank you, Madame Dupont, oeillets, we want some, bunches.” “O God, stick your face in them Fayne Rabb. Where have they come from? Wine, wine, they smell of wine, sops-in-wine.” “O God Clara look, look they’re wet and smell them and how cheap, nothing, all these for only (work it out) about ten cents” and Madame Dupont was scolding “you are always so — extravagant. It is extravagant reckless Americans like you Mademoiselle Hermione who spoil our people.” Sops in wine. I shall go mad with it. Yes, I know I’m too hot and the heat loves me. My head is still going round and round and the salt is sweet from the little clean tide washed canals. They are dreams these Breton women. They are gulls. French. Not frogs. Not hawks. Gulls. Sea-people with wings. How can I ever go further than this? “can’t we have supper on that same little pavement, O damn Madame Dupont. No, we simply can’t trail all that way back to meet her, in order to save a half a franc on the dinner and couverts (all the bread you can eat) compris. I’ll pay the extra. What did it amount to anyhow? The four of us about fifty cents a piece and she said it was too much. I’m too tired. I’ll stay here alone. Let me die here. O yes bring me an omelette like last night. Merci, you are so heavenly to understand my French. How kind of you to understand my French. How heavenly of you to understand. O like last night, exactly, like last night — last night—”
The sunset even like last night, faint flamingo rose touching the sails in the little clean salt-water canal like roses on snow. And the Breton hats, children even, little girls in gull-wing hats. They must wear them. They must wear them. They say it’s for good luck. Someone had told her. Where? Was it Pierre Loti? Something had come true again anyhow, something one had read came true. . Pierre Loti most likely, even the little girls, babies even, wear the gull winged bonnets for good luck.
Sailors like Pêcheur d’Islande with red pom-poms so odd on their blue tam o’shanters that they call berets. O France let me die here, let me die, press me to you, beautiful book, a flower’s leaf floated here by chance, a moth with dried wings spread out. . between your vivid pages.
“Did she die here?” O, but she couldn’t, she couldn’t have died, the smoke wreathing in its hideous obscene whirl upward across these (perhaps) very roofs. “I can’t believe that she died here.” But O horrible, horrible suppose it had never happened. Suppose that it was going to happen. For it never could have happened, but it was true. But it could never really have happened. O it was only a story they told us like old King Cole and the Seven Sisters and the prince who turned into a frog. Frog. Frog. It was only a frog story without even the Black Forest intense wood-reality of Grimms tales. It was not even a legend out of the woods, not a real fairy-story. Something made up and French story books were never any good. So it wasn’t true. It was a bad story. On the floor. Here, here it was they burned. . no, no, no, no, it wasn’t true. Hideous smoke wreathing up. “I wish we hadn’t come to Rouen.” “What?” “I don’t know. So tired, all these cathedrals. Saint Ouen. How about going back there?” “But it was you who said you wanted—” “O don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it was I who wanted to come, to come here, to come even to Rouen. O it was the Fennels at the Art Academy, friends of Mrs. Anderson (she wanted me to meet them) who put me up to it. He had made a lot of drawings of the rose-window in the Cathedral and the South Kensington (I think they call it) Museum in London bought them. They put me up to it. Everyone has to see Rouen.”