“Did you say vultures; but it’s not Prometheus.” George was standing by her standing by the grand piano. The room was filled with skirts brushing a square of bright carpet. Sunlight fell like clotted Matisse paint along the violet edge of a rich carpet. “What colour is this carpet?” “Mother calls it petunia. She likes the word petunia.” “I should imagine your mother would like the word petunia. What George do you call it?” “I call it putrid purple.” “It’s not, George, purple; it’s certainly not putrid.” Skirts, too dark-gathered in a far corner, darkened the purple carpet. Sunlight fell (now she saw it) straight out of a French picture. “Heavy clots of paint should be smeared on everything.” “What, graceless hamadryad?” “Am I graceless? Am I a hamadryad? I mean I thought thought should be smeared over with paint. It’s too unthinkable.”
“She’s pep-igrammatic,” George said, striding proud showman across a strip of violet, “our Lady of Sorrows, Miss Gart here says, looking sorrowful” and he repeated her remark making it funny, imitating Hermione with stoop-forward of shoulders and a hand uplifted as if holding a stiff lily, “She says looking so sorrowful” and he repeated it again while people shouted and said “How quaint of her” and Lillian murmured above the murmur “Now Miss Stamberg, you must play for us.”
Standing like someone out of Greek drama, her hand (on the piano-polished piano top) felt beat and live quiver of naked nerves that were the quiver and live beat of song, that were the long tones drawn from a harp. People in a circle, in a half-circle, people in a sort of splice of a bit of a circle shaped like the harp frame were (it appeared) making tired things sing, notes open and spread and tired nerves (the piano’s?) respond, sing and break into little catch-in-your-throat noises, making her hand just conscious, acquisitive, making her say my hand can dip down into this very black pool (the piano-polished top of the piano) and lift up odd star-notes, and things drawn out like the nerves in the dissected frog I did for that biological treatise that I never finished, that went on kicking after he was carefully dead.
She seemed, like a frog on a wide slab of beautifully sterilized and radiantly clean glass, to be kicking, to be feeling with some set of nerves other than the set of nerves that had so carefully deadened in the processes of her becoming dead. I was dead and am alive again.
Music is a thing that makes notes of light pulse and beat and it’s so odd so often such very unlikely and uninspired people can play like this one. Before Hermione, standing like some young Greek hierophant by the piano, a face emerged, emerged from the stir of notes and star-notes of notes (some sort of super-Chopin chopped up into bits, a new musician she had never heard the name of) and a curious flat glass surface emerged, two flat glass surfaces that caught light, that dispersed light, that suddenly let light through her pince-nez and showed the smallish uninspired eyes of the musican. Her name is Stamberg, Jew or German or German Jew with a figure like that and wearing eyeglasses that have a tiny chain, a little rolled gold chain that fastened now behind her ear under her rat-tail untidy lean hair and that when she stops playing will be pulled off with a jerk and will fasten to a ridiculous little hook-in thing that is hooked in to the flat part above the protruding part of her odd humped front of drab cerise shirtwaist.
She has one of those patent things for holding glasses, a chain in a sort of piano-polished pillbox sort of holder fastening on to the front of her almost-cerise shirtwaist. Miss Stamberg went on playing. Beneath nerves that went on kicking after the frog was dead, notes beamed and shot star and meteor and shooting star, reflection of star and meteor and shooting star seen in the polished top of the piano that was a black pool . . . lilies of all kinds. . . . lilies of all kinds . . . I am out of the Winter’s Tale. I am Hermione.
George and this woman who is common, who is obviously Jew or German—have a secret, a power I haven’t. Why haven’t I ever done anything?
The eyes met her eyes. There was shuffle and voices and applause and voices and shuffle and “Won’t you play the Aprés Midi d’une Faun.” Someone (Lillian?) speaking the sort of French George was never tired of speaking, saying “aprés midi d’un faun” and there was a world she had never seen, had never entered that beat luminous and faint and far and near and nearer and luminous, that had so beat under her hand resting like the hand of some ouija-board expert on the polished top of the piano.
Their eyes met, eyes went on looking at her, praising her, “I like playing when someone listens.” “Listens? Don’t they all listen?” “No. George listens. But George hasn’t a scrap of real music in him. I mean he listens but he is faulty. He has no possible sense of time, no quality but he has a timbre.” “George has a—?” “A timbre. A sort of vibration that most people haven’t.”
Who were these people who talked like this? People who talk like this ought to have great luminous agate eyes like eyes set into a Mena-period or pre-pyramid-period Egyptian image with hair carefully put on, all of a piece, like a wool hat. People who say “timbre” like that, who say “vibration” like that, ought to be beautiful, how odd of her and of George to have such odd, close together inanimate eyes though sometimes the eyes of George get a flick of jade, seen through trees, like eyes seen underwater. In themselves they are nothing, these eyes look at me from behind glass, from behind conservatory glass . . . she has put on her glasses again, is running over a sheaf of pages she has unrolled from a rather shabby music-roll, has found something.
I would like to scream at her, “Now don’t play anything” for I see suddenly she is letting things loose; music is like science, it is all made to a pattern, it is all made like frost flowers or the leaf on leaf set opposite leaf on the rather naked stem of a tall lily. The leaf set opposite a leaf that makes a geometric pattern and the veins of a dissected ox eye that made a pattern and you must be careful cutting things up, have a glass slab and clean slab, for music makes patterns like things cut up on a piece of flat glass . . . music makes patterns. I am tired of things that make molecule pattern and pattern like planets rotating round the sun and planets making just so much of a slight variation in their so set circle. Everything can be predicted by everything before it and music is only another way of predicting things. God who is light, who is song, who is music, is mantic, is prophetic, that is what Helios means, a god who is prophetic . . . I see the god who is prophetic held like a round globe on that boy’s hands.
Scuffle, ruffle, people going, people coming. Lillian wasn’t paying any attention to anyone, to anything. She was standing at the piano, standing by Hermione. Her eyes too were set too close under eyebrows that just did not match bright hair fluffed up in an exaggeratedly only just not fashionable pompadour. The hair was fluffed up just so as not to be fashionable giving Lillian a sort of distinction none of the other people in their coats and skirts and their summer material and their handbags and their shoes crossed on footstools, had.
“I like you because you’re not fashionable.” Was it Hermione who had said that to Lillian or Lillian to Hermione? “We must be thinking alike, thinking in a sort of pattern” (it was Lillian who had said it to Hermione) “because I was just thinking I like the way your hair fluffs.” “Oh my hair—impossible.” “No. Not impossible. Improbable a little.” “You are like George.” “Like George?” “He’s always playing with words, juggling, I tell him, like a circus rider.” “George is rather like a circus rider.” (It was odd she should have seen it) “Now I think George has genius, George might be great yet.” “George—great?” “Why, hadn’t you thought about it?” Her eyes were the colour of an ox-heart daisy, the black brown center of the flower heart and her hair was the fluffed out row of odd ragged petals of a late summer oxheart daisy. Gone warm, she was the colour of a great aster, gone mellow, a velvet dahlia. The waxwork quality was overlaid like some old painting with mellow sunlight. “But that great lout of a boy. Don’t let’s talk about him . . . and my dear child you must take that with you.”
For Hermione had said, apparently with that part of her brain that catalogued pa
mphlets from the Institute de France and that catalogued pamphlets from the Universities of Berlin, Bruges and Brussels, that catalogued and made little notes in a neat note book, “Now I must be going” and another part of her mind, apart from that mind, had prompted her as apart from the wings somewhere, had whispered so that she had automatically reached out a ouija-board thin hand and picked up the statue.
Lillian was saying, seeing her lift the little object and turn it, turn it, oh so carefully “And my dear child you must take that with you.”
nine
She talked to this little thing. She went on talking to it. Life poised hawk-wing above a desert in her words, life poised and life above a desert said “I have wings, see, I have wings,” for the hands of the boy were always lifted toward a heaven that had neither top nor side nor length nor edge nor any end whatever. Heaven, a flat lid, was pressed (in Pennsylvania) over their heads. Heaven pressed down (like Carl Gart, like Uncle Sam pressing things down in test tubes) was lifted by these frail hands. The praying hands of the praying boy sustained her.
Yet why should I be sustained, she said to herself? Eugenia is pleased now about George’s great-aunt; she loves Lillian, Lillian is back and forth, they both work on underclothes, they put things in the hope chest . . . they seem happy about it. I will go to Europe. It’s odd people getting reconciled so quickly . . . Carl likes Lillian . . . the hands of the praying boy sustained her . . . it’s odd that Carl likes Lillian. Lillian sits tight in her shop-window wax figure and talks so prettily about things she’s never heard of. Lillian met Professor van Holtz in Antwerp on a boat. She is always meeting people on boats, off boats, everyone in the world sooner or later is met by Lillian on or off a boat. Boats became one with edges of things with an initial H.G., Hermione Gart. I am Hermione Gart and will be Hermione Lowndes . . . it wasn’t right. People are in things, things are in people. I can’t be called Lowndes.
She met Lillian at the head of the stairs. “Oh my darling. I adore that colour.” “Colour?” What colour was it? A colour wavered about her, automatically chosen from a row of things, new dresses, old dresses made over. The colour was (wasn’t it?) green. “This green colour?” “Yes you are Undine, or better, the mermaid from Hans Andersen.” “Yes, I am Undine. Or better the mermaid from Hans Andersen.” Undine long ago was a mermaid, she wanted a voice or she wanted feet. “Oh I remember. You mean I have no feet to stand on?” That is what Lillian means. Lillian is the first to find me out. Lillian has found me out. There is something about Lillian. She knows perfectly well that I don’t belong, that there is no use. Eventually I will tell them that there is no use. Lillian has found out that my name is Undine.
“Well birdie, will you stand there always staring?” Hermione heard that odd note in Eugenia’s voice. Her wasn’t pleasing Eugenia. Something hit me on the head, Gart and the formula, how dare they go on pretending I am just like other people? For Eugenia . . . I will go on pretending I am just like other people. “Hermione is getting spoiled by all your petting.” “Petting? Do we pet her?” “George has a new vocabulary, Rossetti, Burne-Jones—odd distorted creatures. I think them odd distorted creatures.” Odd distorted Hermione descended the hall steps. She moved odd, distorted like a mermaid with no feet to walk on, down the steps, sliding with mermaid gaucherie across the hall in the green chiffon gauze, that was something from last year refitted, made green and gauze-like by Mrs. Rennenstocker who came every day now and was always sewing.
“If you could stand still Miss Hermione.” “Yes, Mrs. Rennenstocker.” “If you could move a little till I see how this seam will hang.” “Yes, Mrs. Rennenstocker.” “I mean if you move graceful as if you was at a dance.” Hermione stepped forward, pirouetted woodenly between humps of sewed material and lumps of discarded material and pins making pin-patterns, catching little spark and pin-glow of light as evening just dipped above the Farrand forest. “Is this what you mean, exactly?” “No. I don’t mean any exaggeration—I mean as you would move if you might be at a party.”
How did one move, if one might be at a party? Hermione stood frozen, stiff with terror, a studio mannequin hung with blue silk. Where now would all this lead her? Clothes made green and gauze-green and blue (for George liked her in green and blue and blue-green) runnels across the bared boards of the old nursery. The old nursery with its strip of rag carpet had been a sewing room for Mrs. Rennenstocker since the day when the sewing machine first stood where the dollhouse used to. Mrs. Rennenstocker was always at the sewing machine, the light was always just about to fall above the Farrand forest . . . “Ain’t you happy to be having all these nice things?” “Oh, yes, Mrs. Rennenstocker. I am awfully happy.”
A man came to see about the rain pipes. The job-lot man he had with him said there was stagnating dead moss and god knows what in their well . . . “Another three days and” . . . Hermione went dizzy . . . days . . . days . . . typhoid. Someone said “typhoid.” They hadn’t any of them typhoid. Thank God Minnie is away. She would have blamed it all on mama and quoted House Beautiful.
A boy was shooting in the Farrand forest and caught his leg in a trap that the Farrand coachman or caretaker had had arranged there for trespassers. Hermione heard him howling, ran into the Gart woods to find him half-way down their woodpath dragging the trap on an ankle. The woodpath was splashed with raw blood almost to the Werby cross-field. She tried to unfasten the wretched iron but the Farrand coachman caught them half way through it.
Mandy had to go south because her father died. There was a strange blowsy Irish woman who wouldn’t serve Mrs. Rennenstocker her meals in their upstairs little sitting room.
Gart Grange wilted like a butterfly put under a glass case, like a leaf, suffocating . . .
“Ain’t this here heat too suffocating? I always say this September heat is worse than real mid-summer.” “Yes, Mrs. Rennenstocker.” “Did you say your mama didn’t like that new Nora that you’ve got now?” “No. I didn’t say mama didn’t like Nora. I said it was hard not having Mandy.” “That darkie is one of the real old southern kind. I was saying to Mrs. Trecken the other day at New Bairnsworth that Mrs. Gart was certainly most fortunate.” “Yes, mama is most fortunate.” “Could you stand a little this way, Miss Hermione, and move like as if you was at a party.” “How does one move, Mrs. Rennenstocker, at a party?” “Don’t make me laugh, Miss Hermione. After all the dresses I’ve turned out and made you over and for those cotillions and everything at the Farrands.” “Those were different . . . children.” “Then nothing came of Miss Kitty and the Baron?” “I don’t know. They don’t write much. I only heard from Minnie, who heard from other people . . . from my brother’s wife.” “Mrs. Bertrand don’t look so peaked as last year.” “No. Mrs. Bertrand don’t look so peaked as last year.” “People did think—”
The light was about to fall above the Farrand forest. The light would always be about to fall above the Farrand forest. The Farrand forest was sealed in consciousness . . . in the Farrand forest was sacrifice, was redemption. “Try on this new blue, won’t you?” So she tried on the new blue and decided to Keep it on as it was so late and so much trouble dressing. Mrs. Rennenstocker protested with pins in mouth but relented and sewed up half a seam under the arm with the ordinary blue basting cotton.
“Your eyes, your dress, the woods and the moon are all in some conspiracy.” “Yes. George. It’s lovely now it’s cooler.” “The moon stands there, will it go on standing? How long Miss Gart does the moon stand still on just such summer evenings?” “The moon never stands still, George. The earth never stands still George. The earth and the moon revolve on a fixed orbit.” “Thank you Miss Gart. Do you think I’m a reporter?” “You talk George, sometimes like one of their ‘breezy bits.’”
“Gart and the formula seem in their minds to be responsible for everything. There was an earthquake in Peru—I think it was. They thought Gart formula was answerable.” “Was it?” “No. We have no seismograph.” “No—” “I mean we have some sort of
odd barometers and meteorological appliances in the barn (what used to be the barn) but we have no seismograph.”
“I have to explain the seismograph or they write up anything. They say Professor Gart and the eclipse or Gart formula and the tidal wave or Professor Gart says the north pole has moved a bit to the south or the north pole is tilting toward the north. I have to tell them really sometimes the north pole isn’t exactly a—a pole at all, like telling children kings don’t really wear crowns.” “How many reporters have you ever told the north pole isn’t a pole at all and what exactly is a—a sisma-graph?” “A seismograph, George,” she went on patiently, “is a thing that records earthquakes.”
Her head was in the moss. The moon shot down a shaft that caught the bronze gilt on George’s harlequin head and made a sort of bronze gilt sort of upsticking clown’s cap of it. His head above her, wore, now she saw it, a sort of peaked pear-shaped cap like a Phrygian, like Paris and the apple. His hair taking on strange semblance made a clown of him, made a fool of him, made him Paris with the apple. The moon made one solid block of silver and she lifted a hand, surprised to see it quietly pass through this molten metal, this heavy gauze of silver that, it seemed, must give out ripping tearing noises as her hand passed through it. She lifted her hand again. The gauze permitted her hand to pass through it. Just above her wrist, above her hand the gauze looked heavier. She flung her arm suddenly at full length upward . . . zzzz . . . Oh God it’s something tearing.
Her arm emerged white from the gauze of the blue chiffon, emerged phosphorescent and white from the silver gauze of moonlight. Her arm was clothed, her body was clothed equally in silver gauze and in blue watercoloured chiffon. “Your dress tonight looked like larkspurs in water. You looked like a reflection of a tall blue flower in water.” Her head was again a head on tufts that darted up like the harlequin head of Paris, like George holding a golden apple, like the fool in Lear or Touchstone saying so this is the forest of Arden. “This is the forest of Arden.” It was George back at the beginning, starting where they had left off so long ago, a month ago? A year ago? “How long ago is it George since we were here last? I mean since that first day you came back from Venice?” George said, pressing her head down into tufts of soft moss, moss now with moonlight on it, “It’s several volumes back, if I remember.”
Hermione Page 11
