Herma

by MacDonald Harris

  Larkin stared at him suspiciously. “Where’s the little gel?”

  “I’m Mademoiselle Herma’s manager. She’ll be along afterward. I’m seeing to the arrangements. Where are our rooms?”

  “Your rooms?”

  “Yes. We require two rooms, but with connecting bath.”

  “Connecting bath,” Larkin repeated heavily, as though he hadn’t understood.

  “And a mirror.”

  “When did you say this little gel is coming?”

  “She’ll be arriving after a while. And she’ll be coming down to dinner.”

  “She a pretty little gel?”

  “She’s a singer,” said Fred, meeting his glance firmly. “She sings opera and other things.”

  “Modjeska said in the note she was a pretty little gel.”

  “She said nothing of the sort.”

  “Yep. Well, I’ll ’spect to see her at dinner.”

  “Right,” said Fred.

  Chewing his mustaches, evidently disappointed, Larkin disappeared. Fred was taken in tow by a Negro majordomo, who led him through the door into an elaborate Corinthian vestibule and up the stairs. Another servant, a boy with Spanish features, staggered after them with the two suitcases. This procession continued on along the upstairs hall, which was immaculately varnished and had pedestals every so often with Roman busts on them. Halfway down this long hall Fred met somebody coming the other way: a lady, rotund in form and no longer in her first youth, wearing a white silk gown that sparkled in some way with tiny silver points.

  He stopped, forgetting for the moment to breathe. He was in the presence of what was surely the world’s most magnificent bosom. In the upper part of the white gown—Fred was unaware of anything else for the moment—all of nature’s bounty was displayed, wonderfully proportioned and straining at the silk. Every detail was, not visible exactly, but suggested through the contours of the ingeniously contrived gown. What in women of more modesty and discretion was a single and undivided monobust was here wonderfully bifurcated, the two convexities delightfully and excruciatingly distinct. Nor were they hemispheres, as in the case of very young girls or women of more modest development. They were lightly pendulous, semicircular at the lower edge but curving at the top into a catenary of the most symmetrical and geometric perfection. They were like two large and soft orbs of the most fragrant balm, suspended in faery film. At the center of each was something that resembled nothing else in the world so much as the tip of a baby’s finger.

  She stopped too and confronted Fred with one hand on her hip. They examined each other for a few seconds. Then she smiled. “I’m Ernestine Lalange. I’m a—friend who stays with Mr. Larkin.”

  Fred was still staring at the bosom. “Are you?”

  “Yes. I just said I was. Are you hard of hearing?”

  “No. My hearing is fine. Eyesight too.”

  “I can see that.”

  She stood there a moment longer, her hand on her hip and the upper part of her body thrust forward slightly. Then she said, “Your room’s down there.”

  “We require two rooms, with connecting bath.”

  “You are a funny one.”

  She swept on, looking back at him once over her shoulder.

  Herma, in her white dress with the strawberry-colored ribbons and the skirt that ended just above the ankle, came down a half an hour or so before dinner, while it was still light. When Mr. Larkin caught sight of her his mouth worked a little and his mustache tipped back and forth. He was wearing his Stetson in the house. But perhaps this was because he had been waiting to take her out to show her the grounds and outbuildings.

  His eyes were a pale blue, the color of the sky after a dust storm. “Like to show you the place,” he told her a little louder than necessary.

  “I’d love to.”

  The horse barn was first. This was his pride. His carriage horses and prize Arabians were fed on the choicest grain in stalls of mahogany and walnut with fancy brass fretwork. The architecture and trim were identical to that of the Big House.

  He lit a cigar and puffed it. “I know horses,” he asserted. “Bought my first when I was only twelve and made a profit on it.” He showed her the tack room, where his racing silks were on display, along with an extraordinary amount of expensive saddlery and the various trophies he had won. His comments were a kind of litany. They were evidently those he made to all visitors. “Never lost a race I didn’t intend to lose,” he told her.

  They went on to the greenhouses, the pump house for the irrigation system where all the piping was polished brass, and the pressing room where wine was made from his own vineyards in October. The wine was served on the tables of his San Francisco hotel. He showed her a bottle. The label with the words “Las Flores” was in the same design as his racing silks, gold with a green Maltese cross. Herma was getting rather bored with all this. She examined the bottle and smiled patiently.

  The tour of the grounds was somewhat more interesting. The whole central part of the ranch was one vast park. In the endless vistas of English lawn, oak trees were scattered about, along with magnolias, rare flowering eucalyptus, and coral trees. Mr. Larkin attempted to break off a branch of coral blossoms for her, but his hernia attacked him when he stretched upward for it and he had to desist. He pointed out the croquet court, the rose garden, and the Temple d’Amour, a kind of gazebo of solid marble in the classic manner.

  He was very courtly, at this stage at least. However his mustache still tipped back and forth when he looked at her, an inauspicious sign. As they skirted around the large pond in front of the Big House he attempted to take her arm, but she eluded him. “You’re a funny gel,” he said.

  The pond was very fine. It was full of lotus and rare water lilies, and there were genuine Egyptian papyrus along the edges. Swans glided over the surface in the gray evening air, and white egrets stood about in water up to their knees. Mr. Larkin threw his cigar into the pond. They went up the path from the pond to the Big House, challenged on the way by a peacock who threatened to spread his tail at them, but retreated when Mr. Larkin threw a rock at him. “Demned beasts. You know,” he told her, perhaps through some devious association with the peacock’s tail, “you’re a pretty little gel.”

  He did take off his hat before they sat down at the dinner table. With the Stetson off he had an aureole of white hair that gave him an odd and quite spurious saintly look. The hair stuck out on all sides, around a bald spot that began at his brow and continued up to the center of his head. The straggly mustache was only partly gray. His nose was long and fleshy, with a bump in the center, and ended in a reddish bulb. He shook out his napkin and began eating, not waiting for the others. Also present at the table was Madame Ernestine, still in her white gown with silver spangles.

  Following sherry, the dinner was expertly served by Chinese waiters. First came a trout from the trout pond, which was not the same as the big pond with the swans; then Chateaubriands carved from Mr. Larkin’s own steers, along with asparagus, pickled cherries from the ranch, and wild rice brought in from Minnesota, The dinner wine was Las Flores Reserve, which was “fruity” as the saying goes and tasted like grape juice with bubbles in it. Mr. Larkin popped cherries into his mouth and expounded his financial principles—this too was evidently part of the lecture invariably delivered to guests. “Nobody ever collected a bill from P. J. Larkin without a court judgment,” he said. “By the time I was as old as you are,” he told Herma, “I was married and a businessman, and making a fortune racing my own horses.” He stared vacantly at the wall opposite. “That was in Missouri,” he added as though he had just recalled it. Seeming to remember that Herma was still there, he glanced at her, his mustache twitching a little, and ate another cherry. “I was a millionaire,” he said, “by the time I was old enough to vote.”

  While he went on staring at her and eating cherries, Herma examined Madame Ernestine. With feminine pitilessness she summed up her assets and faults. Once, it was said, she had been
an actress. Now she was lightly fanée, not the Last Rose of Summer perhaps, but at least one getting on well into August. Her eyes were slightly puffy and there were lines around her mouth. But the bosom was superb, and this made up for all the rest. It was entirely a natural phenomenon and owed nothing to artifice; and neither, as far as Herma could tell, was any corset necessary for the trim and narrow waist. Herma felt a little twinge of envy. Her own waist was about the same size as Madame Ernestine’s, but there was nothing much either above it or below it to accentuate the slimness so eloquently. Madame Ernestine said nothing during the meal, or very little. Mr. Larkin continued his monologue.

  “When I was your age, I crossed the plains in charge of my own wagon train. Fit the Indians.”

  “So did my Aunt Minnie,” said Herma a little crossly.

  “I was a crack shot. Still am. Fought a duel once with a fellow in Frisco that didn’t like the way I bought his bank. Shot off part of his ear. Buying that bank was a smart business. Soon as I bought the bank, I foreclosed the mortgage it held on the Garnet. Those fellows were behind in their payments. It was supposed to be a secret, but I found out about it. Old Collis P. Huntington himself he said to me, “P. J., a fellow has to get up pretty early in the … in the …” He seemed to have trouble remembering what time in the day people got up. “Get up pretty early to get ahead of you. He always called me P. J.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Him, and Mark Hopkins, and Leland Stanford, and Mackay and Fair and Flood and O’Brien. I knew all of ’em. I bought and sold’em.”

  “Did they all call you P. J.?”

  “Everybody did who knew me well.”

  “But that seems like a rather odd thing for women to call you.”

  This seemed to fuddle him. He searched in his memory. “But women didn’t call me that.”

  “What did the women call you?”

  “Well, let me think. I don’t know that they called me anything. I guess,” he said, “that they called me Mr. Larkin.”

  There followed elderberry liqueur. Mr. Larkin’s doctor had forbidden him coffee so nobody had any. Everybody got up from the table, and he led them into the largest and most ornate of the salons, which he called the sitting room. There he sat down at a square pianola the size of a wagon. Pumping this contrivance vigorously with his legs, he pushed the levers and played them first If Your Foot Is Pretty Why Not Show It?, then Champagne Charlie, Saturday Matinee, Kiss Me Mother, Kiss Your Darling, and The Cat Came Back.

  He seemed pleased with himself. He was still in fairly good physical condition, that was clear. Pumping the pedals of the pianola took a certain amount of vigor. He didn’t ask Herma to sing. Perhaps he had forgotten she was a singer. But he remembered after all, because he turned and stared at her all at once in a fixed and portentous manner.

  “And now, young leddy,” he said, “let’s go and have a serious discussion about your career.”

  He led her away to the library. There he sat her down in a chair and pulled up another chair so close that their knees were touching.

  “I’m not a man that likes to waste his time,” he said. “Now, I’ve got an opera company in my theater in Frisco. It’s the best in the west,” he said, although Herma knew that the Grand Opera Company was far more distinguished than the Larkin Theater Company, which confined itself chiefly to operettas and other trifles of no very great weight. “Yep,” he said, “I pay all their salaries even when they’re not working. Them singers,” he said, “don’t work one week out of three.”

  “Probably they’re rehearsing.”

  But Mr. Larkin had a metaphor. “It’s like a stable of racehorses,” he said. “They go on eating hay even when they’re not running.” His hand was resting on her knee, perhaps out of absentmindedness. However, the serious discussion of her career seemed to consist mainly of his touching her knee as he made each point. As he went on there were fewer and fewer points, and more and more touching.

  “There’s a manager of the opera company,” he said, “but he takes orders from me. He doesn’t like that sometimes, but he does it.”

  The hand on her knee was strong and sinewy. It was the hand of a frontiersman, but a very old one. It was the color of antique parchment and the nails were not very clean. There were brown liver spots on the back of it. Never, never, and never in the world could she allow herself to be touched by anyone who had brown spots on the back of his hands.

  She stood up, slipping the knee adroitly out from under his hand. “Maybe he thinks he knows more about music than you do.”

  Mr. Larkin stood up too. He followed Herma around to the back of the chair, where she had taken shelter. “That may be,” he said, “but I’m the one that’s got the money.”

  Herma circled a long walnut table with a lamp and a shawl on it. One could keep this up indefinitely. It was like a children’s game. She went around the table one way, he the other.

  “It’s my theater,” he said. “It’s called the Larkin after me.”

  “No one,” said Herma in a matter-of-fact tone, “can possess the soul of an artist.”

  He lunged around the table at her like a mountain lion. Herma turned deftly away between two chairs and out the door of the library. He followed.

  “I buy’em and sell’em,” his voice echoed in the corridor, evidently apropos of the souls of artists. She glanced back. He was a few yards behind, staring not exactly at her but over her shoulder in an oddly distant way, as though there were a ghost down the corridor behind her.

  “I never lost a horse race I didn’t intend to lose,” he mumbled as though to himself.

  Herma ducked out of the corridor and into a room that proved to be the dining room. There was no sign of Madame Ernestine. She went out through the door on the other side. The old gentleman, who was beginning to totter a little, chased her from room to room, knocking expensive vases from their pedestals as he went. When he saw Herma heading across the vestibule toward the front door he stopped and searched around on the hat rack for his Stetson, which he set firmly on his head. When he got it on he realized he had lost sight of her. It was out the door she had gone, the little witch. He went on across the marble tiles of the vestibule, groping in the air ahead of him like a sleepwalker.

  Outside, Herma went down the steps into the night. A slice of moon as yellow as a melon hung in the sky to the west. It lightened the sky a little, but the park, the trees, and the pond were as black as ink. Her white dress glowing in the darkness, she went on down the path around the pond, not running exactly but at a quick walking pace. The old gentleman was somewhere behind her. She heard footsteps on the gravel, heavier and at a slower rhythm than her own.

  On the far side of the pond the path divided. And here Mr. Larkin took a wrong turning. Instead of following Herma he went on around the pond in pursuit of an egret, which he mistook for her white dress in the darkness. He realized his mistake only when he was up to his knees in water. He stopped, watching the white shape take to the air with a beating of wings.

  Coming back around the pond the other way, Herma regained her room without difficulty and latched the door. “What a donkey,” she said. She went into the bathroom, turned to the mirror, and set her hands into her hair to push it back from her brow. She looked into the glass with a faintly sibylline, searching expression. Her fingers reached behind her for the hooks on her dress.

  When Fred came downstairs it was after midnight. Mr. Larkin had gone to bed, and Madame Ernestine was wandering around aimlessly through the series of connecting varnished salons. When she saw Fred she found a servant and had him bring two tiny cups of coffee. The Chinese boy served them in a kind of breakfast room lighted with a pair of oil lamps. There was no electricity in the house, Fred noticed for the first time. It had been built in the seventies and Mr. Larkin had kept to his old-fashioned notions. They sat down at a small round table no bigger than a hat, so that their hands almost touched as they reached for the cups. Fred had difficulty removing his eye
s from Nature’s Bounty across the table and keeping his attention on the conversation.

  He said, “Mr. Larkin seems very vigorous for his age.”

  “Oh, that pig. He has cast me aside, contending that I’m too old to interest anyone any more.” She spoke in a slightly theatrical way, drawling the words as though it were a part she was taking only half seriously.

  “I can assure you he’s mistaken.”

  “He says I’m too heavy. He likes young girls. Skinny little things. He always has. However,” she went on in her vein of mock pathos, “he allows me to go on living here.”

  “That’s generous of him.”

  “Very generous. Or perhaps only absentminded. And then too, from time to time, when he gets hard up … It’s humiliating,” she concluded, not filling in the details.

  “H’mm,” said Fred.

  “He’s as horny as an old stallion. Few men can boast, as Lucky Larkin can, of having been sued for breach of promise at the age of seventy by a nineteen-year-old girl.”

  “Remarkable,” said Fred.

  If there were two moons, Fred thought, still entranced by the spectacle across the table, they would shimmer thus side by side in the soft summer sky.

  “It sounds like an exciting life.”

  “Oh, that sort of thing doesn’t happen much anymore. I think he’s getting more careful. Perhaps,” she said, “someone will still shoot him in the end. But he’s a tough old bird. He survives. Everyone else from his time is gone, but he survives.”