Words make tin pan noises, little tin pan against my ear and words striking, beating on it, bella, bella, molta bella, bellissima, you are, he was saying bellissima and he must see Bellissima. Why didn’t he talk English on the telephone? Anyway, far away the voice of George making circus tent noises, little far away miniature Punchinello shouting outside a tent, Bellissima.
“I mean, I can’t. I can’t possibly see you.” Now why couldn’t she possibly see George? It was evident that she couldn’t see George, but why couldn’t she see George? Now just wiry can’t I see George tomorrow? . . . “The heat is too, too awful.” Yes that was it, he wanted trees and the moss, trees and did she remember the perch in the live oak (he remembered it was a live oak, he hadn’t known it was a live oak till she told him) and the stream that said . . . that said . . . George was talking some other language. He wanted trees, because it was hot, he wanted her because it was hot. It was hot. “It is hot.” “It is hot” said in answer to something she didn’t understand, didn’t help her. “If you ring off, I’ll simply ring again and again and ring at one and two and three and at dawn precisely.”
She heard the words far and far, little circus tent flap went flap-flap and outside it was Punchinello, a harlequin sort of person with patchwork clothes with patchwork languages, bursting into Spanish or Italian or the sort of French that no one ever tried to think of speaking. C’est agaçant. “C’est agaçant,” she managed over the telephone pronouncing it distinctly, “I mean I’m horribly sorry. It’s far too late tonight and tomorrow—” Tomorrow. There must be something. “Oh. I am so sorry. It’s terribly agaçant. There is a woman simply won’t be put off. Nellie Thorpe, you never I think met her. I had her letter with yours. I only just had yours.” Followed long tirade. He left letters to be posted after he left the pension and letters to be posted immediately and he had tipped the boy too much or he hadn’t tipped the boy enough and the letters that were to be posted after he left were posted the week before he left leading to countless difficulties. “Agonante”—and the letters he wanted posted immediately, ecco, Bellissima, were left till after he had left. “Then I’ll see you next time.”
five
“George. It was George on the telephone.” “So I gathered.” “It was George.” “You said he was in Venice.” “You said he was in Venice” brought that odd tone into Eugenia’s voice.
“You said he was in Venice” brought back odd things, things that had all along been half-accepted and so the more difficult to reject openly. When Eugenia said “You said he was in Venice” in that tone of accusation, Hermione knew she must formulate George Lowndes. It was going to be very difficult to formulate George, to concentrate enough to get an image of George, to say, “I hate George” or to say, “I love George.” She perceived heat lightning wavering above the Farrand oak trees and realised that now was the moment for some definition.
“I did say I thought, Eugenia, he was still in Venice. I said there was no postmark.” Her Gart felt she was groping toward some ill-defined landmark, toward some sort of path out of this dangerous shut-in Pennsylvania, herself bewildered pathfinder in some new unchartered region of thought, of aspiration. It is true “Venice” had meant nothing but George might help her get out. Was it possible that she wasn’t quite a failure? “I intend to ask George.” The thought of George sustained Her for a moment. She perceived Eugene glaring. Her said, “Just why do you hate George so?” “I don’t hate, as you put it, George Lowndes. Have I ever not made any of your friends welcome,” made things again incalculable, though Eugenia, to be quite fair, was no worse than other people.
People hated George. George was agaçant. But people should hate with reason. There must be a reason. There was a reason for Mandy to hate Minnie. There was, as far as Hermione could follow, no reason for Eugenia to hate George so. “Just why do you hate George so?” “I don’t hate as you put it George Lowndes. It’s his odd way. I don’t mind people doing things. It’s the way they do things.” “Things? What things?” “Oh Hermione—outrageous—all the university ladies knew about it.” “Because the university ladies knew that George had a—had a—a person to his room, it’s an outrage, not because George had a person to his room but because the university ladies saw him have a person—anyhow who saw him?—to his room.” “Hus-ssh.” “Yes, I do know. Yes, I do see—but—” (was it too late?) “Yes I do know Tim is awfully lazy.” Now how had Minnie got there?
Minnie was standing by the little table under the picture of Pius Wood, pretending to look up something in the telephone book. How long had she been listening?
“I heard you say George has come back. I couldn’t help hearing. You do shout so.” “Yes, George has come back.” “I always liked George Lowndes. You should never listen, I always think, to what people say about other people. All the ladies at the university always gossip. I was saying to Mrs. Banes the other day that I never knew such gossip for a lot of supposedly cultured people.” Parthian shaft left Hermione staring, her jaw metaphorically dropping, at Minnie ascending the curved staircase, going up prim with self-determination, with an ultraconscious look to her back, I never listen, I never gossip. Now why has she gone off that way with the telephone book? I’ve forgotten Nellie’s number.
V
one
She could flounder toward constructive reality which none of them then had. For them, there was no vantage point of Jazz, no sounding board of Middle West and the alien American growth of their thin strip of Europe had not then been recognized, as such. They were in fact American, had not yet been repudiated.
Their type of mind was still recognisable, a later blare of mentality left it almost extinguished, as stars just not seen in daylight. They were Nordic, they were New English, they were further extinguished by Germanic affiliation. They budded from a South German affiliation to be blighted with the cross-purpose of New England. Into it, Minnie stepped, nonchalant and aggressive. She was their first “American.”
Minnie was some two generations rooted, might technically be termed that. Minnie was American, might theoretically have been of another continent. Jazz and the prelude of the Midwest had not yet managed to drive that thin Atlantic coast wedge right off into the ocean. The Midwest in all its two generation affiliation was not yet so predominately “American.” Minnie Hurloe was technically of another center. She was different. They did not know what it was, they had no words to say it. Eugenia at best might mutter, “Bertrand’s wife had an unhappy childhood.” They were too loyal to discuss this alien prodigy. They did not even understand that it was alien.
It was before the days of their capitulation. The term “alien” had not yet been invented. “Aliens” in Europe, now “alien” in America, they yet had peculiar standards. But they had no word for those things; they were not English, were not German, they were not according to the later formula “American.”
Americans rooted in the subsoil yet had peculiar standards; the deeper rooted, the more flamingly parasitic they seemed. Hermione flaming up into some uncharted region of “America” was so far more American than the later-day Midwest, that she, so to speak, fell ridiculously over backwards to preserve her own integral uprightness. She had a way of saying, “It doesn’t matter what you are so long as you are yourself.” She did not know what gnothi seauton meant, perhaps had not even caught the tone of its peculiar syllable. To know herself she would know Minnie, would know Bertrand, would know America. There was no one to tell her that America reaches round and about and that ghosts live even in America.
America has its Hinterland, as yet, be it precisely stated, vaguely charted. There are today not a few signposts, set by valiant pioneers in that Hinterland of imagination. In the days of Hermione, signposts were yet unpainted. Bastards like herself, alien to either continent had yet no signposts. The later generation found their way about, put all their energy into “life,” had no crying need for definition. Her’s energy must go groping forward in a world where there was no sign to show
you “Oedipus complex,” no chart to warn you “mother complex,” shoals threatening. “Guilt complex” and “compensation reflex” had not then been posted, showing your way on in the morass.
two
Nevertheless there remained strains of tardy civilization common to both continents. There were teacups, tea-handles, even there was such an anomaly as a teacozy that day at Nellie Thorpe’s. Nellie Thorpe had a sister Jessie, who had had a picture exhibited somewhere in Paris. Said picture was perched upon the grand piano, perky little exhibition number guaranteed its reliability. Because after all, it might just have been a pewter platter set there, against a drop of velvet, so intimate its highlights, so infallible its painted-in dint of pewter shadow. American art . . . Paris. The thing, had it been ironical, would have been coup de grâce. So too would the clatter about Nellie’s table, which could hardly have been distinguished from that of Chelsea or certain sectors of the Rive Gauche, in anything but a possibly even more overstressed self-consciousness.
There was perhaps, to be fair, no other “attitude” for them. The ground under their feet had not yet been sufficiently stabilized to guarantee the later leap into nothingness as from intellectual asphalt. They remained part still of the almost but not quite “set” intellectual utilitarian asphalt. They could not radically leap away from standards that were not altogether there to leap from. States of mind corollating the pewter platter carefully highlit against the fall of prescribed velvet were not yet catalogued and consequently to be disclaimed as “sterile.”
Their states of mind were not then apparent to them. They did not see that their carefully grouped “literature,” “music,” “art” criticisms were as carefully highlit, as Jessie’s picture. Jessie stood out among them as becomingly shoddy, was superior in an inferior manner, appearing Anglo-shabby, her heels deliberately left to shambles though her one-piece shantung costume almost succeeded. “Paris?”
Jessie Thorpe almost succeeded where the others failed, she failed where they almost succeeded. The Rive-Gauche touch was refreshing as an arum in the desert but her air boded inferiority, Nellie having becomingly attained an acquired Bryn Mawr touch. But both Nellie and her sister were running true to type, there was no hint of externalised America in them. Nellie’s literary pretensions were also niched, had acquired a pleasant semblance of reality, her form of pewter against velvet. Nellie had had an essay actually commented on by the North American Quarto though “not actually accepted.” Nellie’s sister had, by that pewter plate, the so much further attained. Though Jessie was perhaps older, and years then so awfully counted. One was labelled by years as classic art collections are by centuries. This year was by that time the so much more important than any later stretch of vague ten years or even vaguely fifteen.
All this, Hermione Gart vaguely sensed, vaguely knew was there, she vaguely met it halfway as she stepped from an asphalt grill into the cave area of Nellie Thorpe’s half-dismembered town house. The family had gone, Miss Nellie the maid explained was waiting upstairs. Hermione knew they had been talking of her as self-conscious; she stumbled through the doorway. It was Nellie’s own voice saying “Such clever people . . . and at the end, Hermione failed completely.” The schoolmarm slightly acrid superiority of Nellie’s voice was cut across by Jessie’s “She’s far too perceptive for your subliterary Bryn Mawr, Nell.”
three
Perception, perceiving, having perceived, being perceived. None of this thing termed “perception” seemed to have entered consciousness with the somewhat problematical exception of Nellie’s sister, Jessie. Jessie saw just around the corner. Nellie could see as far as the room wall and the fact that it might be “distinguished” to have a pewter platter, exhibited in some little sub-offshoot of some minor French Academy. Perception might have been perceived but it wasn’t at that moment.
That moment was prolonged for an exact re-evaluation of the room and its contents by Nellie Thorpe who had realized by a fraction of a second too late that she might have made a blunder. Nellie Thorpe hesitated, then decided that she could not now redeem a possible error in “taste.” She rallied to her predicament; “My dear . . . this is the other creature that I wrote you is fey with the same sort of wildness.”
It appeared that the girl thus indicated, was anything but that. She was stonily incarnated. She sat somewhat withdrawn but forced straight into the core of a predicament, she rose valiantly. She moved with a stolid directness that made the rest of them seem like so much sawdust. They were that, mental scatterings of ideas, whittled away from Europe. The girl said “How do you do,” in a somewhat ironical imitation of Nellie’s Bryn Mawr manner. She sat down opposite Her Gart at the little table.
There was nothing however of her reality in that girl. The mind of Her Gart jibed off from “fey with wildness.” The phrase was typical of Nellie, of her pseudo-affectations, of her knowing air of accepting things she didn’t in the least realize meant things that, if she had recognized, she would have rejected. Nellie was taking stock of her immature blunder. The two she observed didn’t in the least look “fey.” She might do anything, said Her Gart to Her Gart, but she couldn’t get me out of concentric tree-circle on concentric-tree-circle. The trees were gelatinous and she wanted a wall of breakers. There was nothing however to do now for it. Her Gart regarded the new acquaintance across a table and regarded a centerpiece. The thing was fringed, had hieratic center still demonstrably quattrocento through untidy scatterings of teacups. The fringe was linen thread knotted with peculiar deftness. Hermione pulled at it. “Oh, what a pretty teacloth.”
“Yes. Isn’t it. The last time, no it was the time before last, we were in Florence—Aunt Jessie insisted on matching the little tray cloth we had got from the time before that” and so on and so on and so on. Throw out a little word, that was tact; tact is throwing out a little word and the thing goes on and the thing goes on.
A convex Victorian mirror above the head of the girl opposite showed Nellie and Hermione tilted sidewise, making an exaggerated puffed out little Dutch group of them, table and cloth and careful lines of the oblong pattern where the folded cloth had been carefully unfolded, making two careful lines, bisecting teacups clustered and teacups scattered . . . someone was interfering with the teacups.
“Yes, it was rather a blow. I mean getting just so far; rather brilliantly they said, and then utterly, utterly coming down on everything. I failed,” she flung it out, “utterly.” Someone was asking her what she would take up next? Did one take up something next? What did one take, as they say, “up” after one had been banged on the head and sees triangles and molecules and life going on in triangles and molecules. “Oh—it’s too—too late.” It was really too late to take, as they say, “up” anything. “Are you eighteen or twenty-one?” said some ironical cold voice.
Nellie’s saccharine Bryn Mawr voice tried to turn away the other voice that again said, “Your incredible Bryn Mawr, Nell.” Nellie was saccharine, the other voice protested and Nellie went on being tactful. Tact, tact; tact is throwing out a word at the right moment. It was someone else’s turn to talk. The girl opposite wasn’t being tactful. Nellie’s sister was descending again, soft edges to the grim voice. “Are you just eighteen or all of twenty-one?” Now the saccharine voice again and the other voice was badgering Nellie. One really couldn’t be bothered listening.
Nellie was trying to turn away Jessie’s slightly husky-at-the-edges voice. A face went with the voice. A face drew out of people grouped like teacups and people bisected by long lines of blue curtain hanging from miles above one’s head, from a ceiling miles above one’s head to a floor miles below one’s feet. The floor was polished and showed diagonals of the blue curtain in space between chairs going down and down. Bits of the floor went down, reflected between table legs; long lines of pure blue. Think of long lines of pure blue. Across the table, with its back to the little slightly convex mirror, facing Her Gart and Jessie, was this thing that made the floor sink beneath her feet and the
wall rise to infinity above her head. The wall and the floor were held together by long dramatic lines of curtain falling in straight pleated parallels. Answer the husky voice that speaks to you. Don’t look at the eyes that look at you. “A girl I want to see you.” The girl was seeing Her.
four
There are of course bits of colour to be thrown down like counters in a banking house, or chips across a poker table. All your life you will retain one or two bits of colour with which all your life will be violently or delicately tinted. You will have an infinitesimal grain of purple dye or a flat counter to hoard or to risk in one reckless spendthrift moment. There are gamblers of the spirit as there are gamblers of the mind, passions of the psyche as well as passions of the body. All of life may be spent looking in vain for a counter that might bring glory or fame or wisdom which at some off-moment you may pick up unexpectedly—from the gutter—then you save it or you spend it. Take Nellie Thorpe’s room for example.
There is a bowl of peonies on the piano, slightly edged off toward the shadow by the blue-curtained French window. There is Jessie’s counter, one pewter platter that had brought Jessie fame, there was Nellie Thorpe’s Essay on the Bi-lingual Division of the American Literary Consciousness lying carefully uncreased in the Via Torna-buoni leather portfolio with the singing boys of Donatello embossed on the upper cover. There is a scattering of cups and crumbs and a nonrelated body of choruses, off in the shade of still another sister (married) and two other classmates of Nellie’s, almost strangers to the group proper and this other “fey with wildness,” who knew Nellie at “High School.”
Hermione Page 5
