two
His voice was low, sursurring, (it was his word) somewhere. His voice when he wasn’t being too funny, wasn’t showing off, was simple accompaniment to trees above her head, to herself, revitalized, born into trees. “We aren’t in any Gothic setting, George” she wanted to say but didn’t say. “It’s under water” she wanted to say; “It’s under deep-sea water,” she didn’t say. Her eyes half-closing saw George gone tawny, leaf-colour, his hair is the colour of leaves drifting down, he had drifted down from trees. She did say “It’s your hair George.” Hair now started upright to her vision as she opened wide eyes; Harlequin was facing her on a narrow wood path. George was Harlequin though for a moment he had swung back. For a moment George had swung back through a swing door and back and back. George was wavering with his green eyes and his odd Gozzoli features, his curious beauty that made people hate him, his odd tawny hair gone (in small rings) hot on his damp forehead. “Why is it that I can’t love George Lowndes properly?”
“This is the forest primeval, the murmuring pines and the hemlocks,” (George intoned dramatically; she knew why she didn’t love him) “bearded with moss and with garments green, indistinct in the twilight.” She knew why she couldn’t love George properly. George gone tawny, hair the colour of Vermillion seaweed, wash of Vermillion over grey rocks, the sea-green eyes that became sea-grey, that she saw as wide and far and full of odd sea-colour, became (old remembered reincarnation) small and piglike. George being funny is piglike. His eyes are too small in his face. His teeth are beautiful but when he is being funny he unnerves one. George back of George, George seen through a screen door, George gauzed over by lizard-film over wide eyes, George seen with perception was wavering tall and Gozzoli-like with green jerkin. Almost this is the forest of Arden.
George in torn-open collar and throat long and angular rising out of torn-open collar and with throat flung back and square lean chin thrust out against a tree bole, made this almost the forest of Arden. Almost Hermione was out of Shakespeare with George, words running through her mind, there was a smell of leather, of morocco bindings about George Lowndes. Almost this is the forest of Arden and Orlando stepping out with agile feet across leaves strewn across a narrow woodpath. Almost she was lost, stepping back and back into the pages of some familiar rhythm, now this is the forest of Arden. Almost her long legs were bound in Elizabethan trunkhose and almost in her hand, under her hand was a silver chain which almost she was about to drop about the throat of George, of Orlando kneeling, wear this for me one out of suits with fortune.
George Lowndes with his throaty sursurring gone funny, George being funny, nasal intonation, being funny, this is the forest primeval, brought back hunched shoulders, little desk, hard seat of little desk and the heated scrape of slate pencil across slate surface. Numbers jogged and danced and long division made a stop in her brain . . . George, so beautiful, healing her by his presence was a hideous harlequin being funny on a woodpath. “Noaaw this is fawrest pri-meval.”
three
It was the forest primeval, it was not the forest of Arden. George almost made it the forest of Arden. If at that moment, George had made it the forest of Arden, Hermione out of Shakespeare would have been again Hermione out of Shakespeare but this time Hermione from the Winter’s Tale (who later froze into a statue) would have been Rosalind with sleek, deer-limbs and a green forester’s cap with one upright darting hawk quill. Almost. Oh almost, almost this is the Forest of Arden. But not quite. This forest could never be affiliated with that forest. Back and back, hiding among tree trunks, abreast, crouched low among the sassafras and among the trailing vines of wintergreen, there were knees and brown flanks and the long low swirl of stone arrows that cut them forever and forever from the country they had that once repudiated. Repudiate the Forest of Arden and cling to the memory of that Forest as a man clings to the memory of his mother or a mistress he has outgrown. Almost, almost Hermione was Hermione out of Shakespeare . . . but not quite.
Words were her plague and words were her redemption. George with his parody of their New England poet was cutting her again from moorings; she could not join on to benignity in a white wig, to Father Christmas dressed up to imitate an earlier Chronos. Longfellow was Father Christmas, he was not their primeval Father, he was not their authentic intellectual progenitor. George linking up to Castile, with his run of “foreign” literature, was not progenitor to Hermione standing dazed upon a woodpath. Almost, almost she heard words, almost, almost she discerned the whirr of arrows . . . almost, for a moment, George had made it come right, saying “You are a Greek,” saying, “You are a goddess.” Almost for a moment, repudiating that earlier mystic genealogy, her soul had gone futher, almost she had found her mother—wood-goddess on a woodpath. Almost words would work charm . . . but not yet. George had broken charm, chanting in harlequin nasal those words out of New England, “Naw this is the forest primeval.”
four
Charm broken, snapped like a snapped bowstring. She saw where she was. She giggled, lifted the hair from the nape of her neck, shook out the half-dozen bone hairpins. She bound the hair tighter, noted George even could not make an “occasion” of this somewhat nursemaid rhythm she made of this theoretically feminine (of-the-period) gesture. George might have wished there were more coquetry in her, or George might have been relieved there was not. George stared at her. His eyes widened in his face, now he was nearing seriousness, they were no more piglike. George said, “What do you do with yourself, Hermione?” He called Her, Hermione. She said, “Sit down, George.”
Hermione realized George wanted now to help Her. She tried to reach forward to some stabilized world they might create between them. Her head now was simply hot, she felt a tight band about her forehead withdrawn. She felt no whizz of the stone head of an arrow. She said, “Do with myself?” She thought; said, “I don’t exactly know George. There’s always lots around the house. Minnie is ill so much. They’ve gone now to Point Pleasant. I read.” George said, “What do you read?” She tried to drag out some consecutive classroom relay of catalogued information. What now had she been reading? “I don’t know, George. I am the word AUM.”
George said, “What?” “Those little Wisdom of the East books, they seem to be the only thing that fits here. You know—I am the serpent so-and-so, and the certain such-and-such an elephant, naming said beast.” George turned facing Her, rubbed cheek against a tree trunk. “Don’t talk,” he now said, “don’t talk,” but she talked. She said, “I told you on the telephone I was going to a party. I went to a sort of party. Everyone there did something. People are always doing something.”
She now braced herself decisively against her own tree. She rubbed her shoulder blades against that small tree. Small hard tree trunk (as she rubbed her shoulders to more raw reality) swayed a little, upright swaying little tree swayed. She was stronger than the upright little tree. She was stronger than anything. She was too strong. She wished she were not so strong, blighting things, people, herself, Eugenia. She wished she could love George. “I don’t know why you hate George Lowndes so” was the nearest she had got to loving George Lowndes. Corroding “I don’t know why you hate George Lowndes so” and corroding answer, “I don’t hate George Lowndes,” except between her and Eugenia. Something crept, always crept between her and everybody . . . everybody?
“I met a girl at that tiresome Nellie Thorpe’s I told you I was going to see on the telephone?” “Did you?” “Did I what?” “See her on the telephone?” Harlequin squinted down at her as she glanced swiftly up into the eyes of George. The eyes of George squinted down and she saw the nostrils of George the other way round like photographs in the two huge volumes of sliced things on ceilings. Perspective was in sliced things on ceilings. George had been to Europe, had come back and gone back again and had come back again. Why didn’t George stay put, stay there or stay here? George, in perspective, was a figure in the Pitti Palace or something in the Riccardi Palace; he had seen the Ducal Palac
e, the Riccardi frescoes, not only poured over them in enormous volumes with coloured plates laid flat on the floor since the time she could remember.
George was out of the Famous Painters’ Volume, was right, seen that way; from the bottom of a well, he loomed again beautiful, constructed, made. George was made. He tricked up the George that was there all the time, in harlequin words, harlequin language. Was George made? Was there a George at all? “Is there a George at all?”
“You’re nothing, George. I mean precisely nothing.” The brandies swayed in back of George. He was part of the branches. Why wasn’t he part of the branches? Her thought, panther-lean cat, strode up ahead of George. Her thought was swifter than George’s witty, tricky thought. Thought chased thought like two panthers. Her own thought, swifter than the thought of George, was there beyond him. “You’ll never, never catch me.” Her faced George with that, standing on the narrowest of woodpaths that twisted (she knew) a narrow trickle of earth-colour across the green and green that was the steady running of swift water, the steady sweeping and seeping and swirling of branches all about her. If George would catch her, then George would be, might yet be something. “It’s too hot, Hermione.”
Heat seeped up, swept down, swirled about them with the green of branches that was torrid tropic water. Green torrid tropic water where no snow fell, where no hint of cold running streams from high mountains swept down, was swept into and under branches that made curious circle and half circle and whole circle . . . concentric circle of trees above her head (how can anyone ever draw trees?) half circle of a (she saw) beech branch arching earthward. Tree on tree on tree. TREE. I am the Tree of Life. Tree. I am a tree planted by the rivers of water. I am . . . I am . . . HER exactly.
Her caught Her to herself, swirled dynamically on flat heels and was off down the trickle of earth-colour that was the path cutting earth-colour through green pellucid water.
VIII
one
Conversation went on in several layers. There was one gramophone disc, so to speak, of a conversation that she could put on at any moment.
She did not think about the girl she had met at Nellie’s. She had not again seen her. Conversation returned like something forgotten, like echo in delirium. Conversation that said, “You have an octopus intelligence,” and staring up into trees with George lost or forgotten or simply mislaid somewhere, Hermione let octopus-Hermione reach out and up and with a thousand eyes regard space and distance and draw octopus arm back, only to replunge octopus arm up and up into illimitable distance. Something in Her should have warned Hermione. Something far and far that had to do with some scheme of biological mathematical definition had left Her dizzy. It had not occurred to Her to try and put the thing in writing.
Writing was an achievement like playing the violin or singing like Tetrazzini. It had, it appeared, nothing or very little to do with the fact of cones of green set within green cones. Writing had somehow got connected up with George Lowndes who even in his advanced progress could make no dynamic statement that would assure her mind that writing had to do with the underside of a peony petal that covered the whole of a house like a nutshell housing woodgnats. Woodgnats without wings buzzed continually; Dostoevski had not entered into general conversation. George Lowndes, the high-water mark of the intelligentsia of the period, proffered Shaw, Maeterlinck, Bertrand de Born and, half-apologetic, the unexpurgated Morte d’Arthur. Writing had no mere relationship with trees on trees and octopus arms that reached out with eyes, too all overseeing.
two
Hermione, thrown flat on wood moss, regarded green seawater that was parting, that was sluicing apart like crude description of the Red Sea parting. George, standing on dry land, severing sea from sea, was man on dry land, no proper deep-sea monster. George let light through to fall on her face. She waved back the light, fastidious as a gamine in a cellar. Under the sea, deep down in her deep-sea consciousness, she was putting out premature feelers; octopus became potato in a cellar. George stepped through suddenly as through an open stuck-fast cellar window. George stepped through a flap of branch that she had thought closed her away from any possibility of George Lowndes ever finding Her. “The hounds of spring are on winter’s traces,” said George Lowndes.
“The hounds of spring are on winter’s traces,” repeated George Lowndes. He let fall red-sea on red-sea which now became simply simple theatrical swirl of green baize curtain. The hounds of spring are on winter’s traces caught up to Her, gazed down and down; it was not the ginger of poor Jock gazing. The hounds of spring are on winter’s traces and she looked up into the face of George Lowndes that went on now embroidered on the neat fold of a curtain “. . . the mother of months in meadow or plain, fills the shadows and windy places with lisp of leaves and ripples of rain . . .” and George stepping forward was George, heavy foot was heavy on moss, he left a print like Tim left on their carpet. Hermione recalled Tim and that day and rain and slush dripping on the carpet. He was lugging in their Christmas tree . . . “And the brown bright nightingale amorous. Is half assuaged for . . . for . . .” It was George about to bend, he was near, he was coming nearer, he was small, he could never, never come near for Hermione looked far and far and George was a midge and a leaf was the size of a house and an acorn-cup would shelter herself . . . for . . . I am a tree planted by the river of water. George did not know that, was midge under peony, I am the word tree. He shall have a new name.
I am in the word TREE. I am TREE exactly.
Hermione sat bolt upright. George was going to sit, had sat beside her. “You said I’d never catch you.” “Well did you?” His arm sudden about her snake form gave the lie to her swift thought. Her thought was panther-swift, had swirled away long before George made that so sudden suave gesture. George is tricky, unreliable. Her thought preceded her into forest branches. George could never love a tree properly.
Kisses forced her into soft moss. Her head lay marble weight in cushion of forest moss. Kisses obliterated trees, smudged out circles and concentric circle and the half-circle that was the arch (she had seen) of a beech branch sweeping downward. The kisses of George smudged out her clear geometric thought but his words had given her something . . . the brown bright nightingale amorous . . . is half assuaged for . . . for . . . her name is Itylus.
three
Smudged out. I am smudged out. Concentric circles that are the trees going round and round are smudged out. I am smudged out. TREE is smudged out. Other circles going round and round in the back of my head are not touched by this spongy sort of thing, across slate, this wrong sort of sponge that smudges over, rules out concentric circles that are George, that is the recurring, rather chivalrous really, kiss of George. George is kissing me, almost Orlando; Orlando kiss doesn’t affect the back of my head.
The back of marble head pressed down down into moss, down down into moss wasn’t affected in the slightest by recurrent, rather charming really, kisses of this George. “Georgio.” He said “Hermione” softly sursurring it, rather nice way of speaking when he wasn’t being funny. George was, it was obvious, not being at all funny. Her head pressed into the moss saw that George wasn’t in the least bit being funny. The back of her head in the moss was pressed out, rounded out, round marble-polished surface in the soft moss.
Polished surface that was the slightly convex mirror hanging above the left shoulder of the creature sitting opposite. She knew the name of the creature seated opposite who had made walls heave and walls fall and straight lines run to infinity in the polished surface left between groups of people talking, teacups talking, people coming and new people and the teacups taking different form, changing interrelation as the heat beat and beat and beat (they could feel it) on the pavement outside the carefully curtained long French window. People were in things, things were in people. Names were in things, things were in names. Pennsylvania. People should think before they call a place Sylvania.
“People should think before they call a place Sylvania.” Hermione saw a
thin claw-like hand pressing against the blue stuff that was the clean sweet fresh stuff of the summer shirt of George. Underneath her hand there was the clean sweet flax-blue shantung, fine nice shoulder beneath the thin shirting. Hermione slipped a long hand into the open space of the wide flung wide collar, felt a smooth surface of polished clear smooth marble. Long dynamic hand ran across the smooth narrow surface, felt thud-thud, heavy thud-thud of rather too heavy bursting heartbeat. Thud-thud, heaving like the heavy foot that had trod heavy on the fine moss. The thud-thud was heavy, did not go with the sursurring of his voice when he wasn’t being funny, did not go with the green of (now they were right) grey-green forest eyes. The eyes when he said Hermione that way were green and grey.
four
He had joked about something she had wanted to tell him? What was it that she wanted to tell George?
As she looked up into eyes that were grey, that were green, she recalled the dynamic splendour of two gambler’s gems, star sapphires, she recalled the tilted mirror that was the back of her head and in that mirror, she saw little stark shapes passing. The front of her head turned and looked into the back of her head as a child may do, astonished to find things turned round in a mirror. Her discovery was a gambler’s heritage. She did not know that all her life would be spent gambling with the stark rigidity of words, words that were coin; save, spend; and all the time George Lowndes with his own counter, had found her a way out.
Hermione Page 7
