Hermione

by Hilda Doolittle

  Things making parallelograms came straight suddenly. Vibrations beating in the air outside her, stopped beating suddenly. Hermione saw the Virginia creeper, its curled edges; leaves curled brown toward the wall where the hot sun caught them. You’d think the Virginia creeper would think that it was summer but no, it turned mechanically obeying something, seasons, things out of Hesiod. The Pleiades, the Hyades, the sun and the moon, the rising of the sun and the moon and the Dipper turning around and around the north star on its handle. Names are in people, people are in names. I don’t believe anything in the world can convince me that the creature with odd eyes slanting rain blue, dark blue at the corners is called anything. Hermione said “Fayne, Fayne” to herself, repeating it. Parallelograms came almost with a click straight and she saw straight. Then she is only a most ordinary (after all) person that I met at Nellie’s.

  eleven

  She said, “Yes, Oh yes Nellie,” she said, “No, Oh no, Nellie,” she said, “Nellie do you think so?” A voice that was Nellie, Anglo-saccharine backwash of Bryn Mawr repeated the oft-repeated, “Oh I am so glad. I know you will be happy.” And Hermione went on, “Yes, he wants me to go to Europe. Yes I will shortly go to Europe,” and Nellie coming back with her “now the last time we were in Florence, no the time before that” like a rubber ball on an elastic that a child drops from a painted wand, from a sort of jumping-jack. Conversation went on like that, Hermione holding the rod, Hermione really working the thing, the stick that made the jumping-jack (Nellie) jump; jumping-jack ball on a bright elastic cord, ball on the end of a rod, drop it, let it bounce automatically back. Hermione held the rod by right of courtesy of her announced engagement (who had announced it? it was in all the papers). Nellie said, “I saw it in the papers,” this jumping-jack sort of wand, of stick with ball on an elastic that held Nellie at the end of an elastic string, bouncing, bouncing. Drop Nellie with “Did you have a happy summer?” Know what she would say, stop her in the middle “And your sister?” drag her back to the little painted stick and push her off with a little “It was hot here” and watch her superiority in bouncing “We had so much dancing. I am quite exhausted” and go on with it “People are coming back now. And you will be so busy,” watch Nellie take it up with “I’m on that awful dramatic arts committee. That’s what really brought me back now. They are giving a play, a sort of modern thing, an awfully modern sort of thing. I mean Shaw is so modern.” “Yes, yes Shaw is modern” and “They made me one of the committee because of scenery, decor, all that because I had that experience in Europe.” “Yes, decor and all that” and “Is it possible that you are coming to it?”

  Well Nellie must know that she was coming to it, because the girl had said, because Fayne had said, “Nellie gave me this name, this address, is it possible your name is Hermione?” and immediately and for the first time in consciousness Fayne became part of life, part of the clock ticking away on the little upstairs sitting room mantelpiece (there were some odd unassorted people downstairs with Eugenia) and part of the curtains that were rose-grey, that were meant to be rose that were getting potpourri-coloured like everything else in this house of little oddly assorted rooms leading into other rooms and rooms that ought to have been linen cupboards and butlers’ pantries, crowded out with tanks and aquariums or shelves of things in bottles.

  Fayne with a click for the first time in consciousness became part of these things, part of Nellie sitting so prim, so upright with her little finger crooked out from a Dresden china cup. There were only two of those Dresden china cups, two and a half really if you count the leftover saucer that Hermione herself after getting Nellie’s message this afternoon had spread with a tiny doily to hide the saucer circle and piled the minute sandwiches in a little Tower of Babylon upon it. Fayne, for some inconceivable reason, became real at just that second, became part of things just as the clock hand was making that almost perceptible little forward jerk, that cricket-leg jerk that little old clocks do make, toward (was it?) the XI that preceded the XII, that meant that some hour was near (V? VI?) and that Nellie would soon be pretentiously making her departure.

  Nellie was a little ill at ease, insisting “This is so much nicer,” really wanting to see the people downstairs. “They are so horribly dull,” Hermione had said for she couldn’t bear breaking herself up again into a thousand pieces, one set of words for Mrs. de Raub, another for old Miss Horton, another for Eugenia, another still for Nellie. Nellie broke through Nellie, saying “This is so much nicer” for she didn’t really think that. Nellie wanted to be downstairs; like Minnie, she wanted to watch, to catch up little servant-girl ends and tags of gossip to quote “Oh Mrs. de Raub, the American School at Rome you know, such charming people.”

  “This is so much nicer. Of course people will chatter so. You must get tired of all this sort of thing, people coming, people going.” “Oh there’s been no one at all this summer. But people are coming back now. People like to come to Gart now before it gets cold. We don’t see many people. Only Eugenia has her afternoons in October. She has always had her afternoons in October. Of course George says—George says it’s so suburban.”

  There was no reason for Nellie to have asked about the concert. Why had Nellie pretended not to know about the concert? How should she get it across to Nellie (she would have to get it across to Nellie) that she had tickets for the play, the sort of concert-play of this sort of five arts sort of dramatic society? “Oh your society” and it came out somehow. “I had some tickets sent me” and it was out somehow. Hermione sliced off the third to the last of the foundation of the sandwich Tower of Babylon and bit through her own carefully chosen watercress and her own buttered thin slices of white bread. You couldn’t trust Nora with anything. I wish that Mandy were back. “I mean, do tell me all about it.”

  “Do tell me all about it” meant to tell me all about her. How to get it across to Nellie for she is HER and I am HER. People are in names, names are in people. “Oh her name—the name of the girl who sent them. Why is she called Fayne exactly?”

  Fayne was part of the clock that had jumped forward with little-cricket almost perceptible jerk of its metallic little hand; and in stillness against the potpourri-coloured curtains (everything in this house is getting potpourri-coloured) it struck its little bellnote sounding from far its note like a bell on the throat of that little dog of Iseult, the book George had brought her bound in vellum with a moiré dark rose ribbon to keep the place, beautiful little book about Iseult and her little dog with a bell on his collar. The clock made just such chime in consciousness. “Oh Fayne. I call it so affected. Her name is Pauline really.Pauline Fayne Rabb. She has dropped the Pauline, calls herself Fayne now. I call her Paul in spite of everything.”

  In spite of everything or to spite everything. I think to spite everything, for why should she be so spiteful? “I mean why does or doesn’t it matter that she is or isn’t Pauline.” “Pauline. Well you know—she always was Pauline. Paulet, her mother called her, Paulet or Paulette. Her uncle used to call her Paulette. Her uncle is responsible—” “Responsible?” “I mean Mrs. Rabb should have married again. She is really quite a young woman. I mean she looks young with her face and her hair—” “Her face and her hair?” “Her face I mean doesn’t go with her hair or should I say perhaps that her hair doesn’t go with her face?” “How, does or doesn’t it go exactly?” “Her hair is too white, you know what I mean exactly. People who have such white hair always look a little—odd. I mean her hair is so white that it looks artificial, she looks artificial and with her odd colour, most unnatural, almost as if she made up.” “Does Paulet make up?” “Paulet?” “You said they called her Paulet. I mean the girl Fayne—” “No. I don’t mean Paul. I mean her mother. Her mother looks as if she made up.” “Oh.” “I mean a woman of her age—she’s really quite young—but you know what I mean. She goes about too much with Paul, with Paul’s friends. She’s always around with Pauline and her friends.” “Is she—is she, I mean married?” “Pa
uline? Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh dear no. Why should you think that Pauline was married?” “I didn’t. I didn’t think that Pauline was married. I meant was her mother—” “Married? Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh Hermione you are a quaint thing.” Nellie went off into high shrieks of pseudo-sophisticated laughter. “How you do get things. I mean how you do, do get things,” and she went on laughing. “You mean she isn’t?” “Oh my dear what a witty question. She is—of course, she is. The idea of asking if Mrs. Rabb is married. She’s so—she’s so respectable.”

  “I thought you just said she wasn’t respectable. At least you went on saying that she was too young for her clothes or for her face or something.” Things emerged, people emerged. A certain Mrs. Rabb emerged, began to take on outline. Like a summer sky puffed over with the whitest of fluffy small clouds “Is she like a cloud exactly?”

  “Like a cloud? Is this a sort of game of twenty questions? No Pauline is absolutely unlike any cloud I know of. Or maybe I shouldn’t say that. She’s like a sort of reflection of a stormcloud seen in water.”

  twelve

  And George was saying “It’s so unlike you Hermione not to have more discrimination” and Hermione was saying “Well after all I really came because that Miss Stamberg who played so beautifully at Lillian’s is to play here.” And George was saying “But Aïda Stamberg does get let in for the most awful sort of down-and-out charity punk dramatics.” And Hermione was saying, “But it can’t be true, it can’t be true her name can’t be Aïda.” And George was saying “But you ought to have known better than to be let in by any dramatic or five-arts or seven-arts or plastic-arts sort of conversazione anyhow.” And Hermione was saying “Well George we haven’t all your sophistication” and a note crept into her voice, was creeping into her voice, why couldn’t George ever let me alone to see things in my own way, to enjoy things even if they are provincial? Now that everyone was taking George so to speak “up” because of that volume on Dante, Her was getting worn out with George, George, George and George and George. Why couldn’t George let her alone anyway?

  “This awful decayed hole too. Oh, shut up, shut up George. She wanted to say “Shut up, shut up George.” Wide stair-circle went straight down and red carpet and wide stair branched at either of her elbows, to run up half the width to the floor above them. Across, a little above, cut off by the half of old gold gilt rail was a sort of mammoth sort of Perseus with wings as big as an albatross fastened to either plump heel. Perseus brandished something and the upper half of a maiden showed leering teutonically and half-clothed across at Perseus. Things are funny, pictures are funny . . . “It’s all so awfully funny. Don’t you think George it’s all so awfully funny?” But George struck an attitude, elbows jerked out at black sides, a sort of wooden elbow jerked out with its sleek black sleeve and George was shaking hands with somebody who had been to London, who hadn’t been to London, “No I’ve come from Paris” and someone else (a stranger) was saying “Delacroix. That’s our 1870 Philadelphia Delacroix.” She heard someone to her left say “1870 Philadelphia Delacroix” and a voice appreciatively gasp “God, Delacroix” and “More likely Courbet. But Courbet was too moss-green” and that is how people should talk thought Hermione. People who know bring things into proportion with 1870 Delacroix, they bring that Perseus with goose feathers at heels funny into proportion. George puts everything out of focus. Those two men with their voices make it right, 1870 Delacroix and that makes it all right. If you say 1870, goose wings become at once impressive. Why can’t George get things in proportion? “No” said Hermione, disrespectfully to George, “I like this old Academy.”

  Things are in people, people are in things and they were being propelled by arms, by legs, by shoulders, down a corridor and there were those odd early Sargents, a sort of odd leftover of an exhibition and George tugging her at her elbow, “Don’t look at those things” and if this is what Europe does to people, Hermione thought, I don’t want Europe and she was being propelled forward listening to voices, a rich rare sort of mellow feeling of being pushed forward into a lace shawl that was fastened across a shoulder with a cluster of lilies-of-the-valley. Something familiar in that breadth of shoulder. “Lil-lian.”

  “Oh my dear, dear child. Everybody’s turned up. I am so glad.” “But George so frightfully hates it.” “Oh George. Ginger. Don’t pay any attention to our Ginger. He’s sour because he never was able to do anything at art school.” “Was he at an art school?” “Sh-hhh—don’t tell him that I told you.”

  People, things. Lillian pushed forward and somewhere a crash and long thunder, something drawn-out; thunder, something familiar, unmistakable “You can’t mistake Aïda Stamberg’s method even when she herself exploits it.” And Lillian said to someone who said that “Yes. It’s Aïda there already. We must hurry.”

  George jerked her (harlequin odd jesture) forward and propelled her outward. The odd queer and distorted feeling of being jerked out of the mellow width of space, out of the length and breadth of people, out of black trouser legs and that nice voice understanding that Perseus is funny and the faint sweet perfume of Lillian’s lily-valleys. “Where does your mother get lilies at this season?”

  Away to the left, muffled now by a space of wall between them came the reverberation and the thunder of Aïda Stamberg playing—Brahms, she supposed it must be. Hermione glanced at the programme dangling with a dance card by a blue string. She had fastened the dance card with the programme by the string to her arm, had forgotten all about it, now felt George tugging at it. “Well, I’ve come here to dance and to dance and to dance after this damn show’s over” and she rescued the dance card saying “George this mark here and this mark here and this mark and this cross that you’ve smudged in sideways don’t any of them count for dances.”

  Lifting her head, tugging at her dance card on a blue string, she saw a woman standing on a sea shell. At the far end of the now absolutely empty outer corridor where she and George were sitting (George had propelled her toward a wide red-plush bench built into the wall) there was a picture of a naked woman standing on a sea shell. At the far end of the room she saw with ironic precision, the upstanding rather dumpy form of the upstanding dumpy woman who was too white, like cheap mother-of-pearl handles to little showy cheap knives, like the mother-of-pearl top to a workbox Mandy had, that Mandy loved—that sort of thing’s all right for Mandy; “Well, I do see,” she found herself exclaiming, “that sort of woman standing on a sea shell sort of art is simply negroid.”

  She had said that “that sort of woman standing on a sea shell sort of art is simply negroid” and she was waiting for George to acclaim her, to say, bravissimo Bellissima or words to some such purpose when she heard the music stammer to some sort of odd castanet climax on the piano, climax silence, silence, climax and then people clapping. She had heard clap, clap, clap, clap. “They clap so solemnly, so steadily, it’s like castanets” and she felt somehow, something in her taking shape, being solemnly slapped so to speak into shape by the solemn precise well-bred clap clap clap that still continued. “They clap clap at something. They’re not really thinking, just all clap clap, a sort of group clap clap.”

  George laughed like a goat, a chortle that turned to a fit of coughing affectedly persisting across the clap and the clap and the clap-clap. “Something in me’s taking some shape somehow.” And she remembered the ouija-board feeling that Miss Stamberg always gave her, “Such a common little woman. I mean isn’t she ordinary.” And she recalled the throb and pulse under her fingers that first day at Lillian’s and the boy who lifted a weight from her tired head. There was it appeared no weight to her tired head; it was full of steady rhythmic clap clap clap. “Oh now they must stop” but they went on clapping. Something takes shape in me with those people clapping. Ouija-board sort of things having nothing to do with clapping . . . is it the “1870 Delacroix of Philadelphia” pronouncement on the stairway that has given me the clue to these things? “All this, all this,” she found herself saying to George like some
one in a play “is of supreme importance.” And George was answering her, not having deigned to applaud her somewhat striking (to herself) epigram about the too-pearl-pink and too-pearl-white woman standing on an unconvincing wax shell at the end of the long corridor, George was saying “You mean Sargent, all those people painting, showing here” and she saw that George hadn’t got her point; it wasn’t because Carnation Lily Lily Rose (Damn Silly Silly Pose George—not originally—called it) was there, hanging there, that she had seen little lights and cross effects of lanterns among roses and recognized some mellow humane super-European consciousness playing here with sunlight, some hand, mellow and humane—making pictures here in Philadelphia, it was something else, something greater that went with planets swirling. George had said, “Don’t talk such rot Hermione.”

  Stars had been swirling in the Gart woods and a boy had shrieked and spilt his boy-blood across the Gart path and something had happened in the Gart woods when a spray of moonlight had caught her and she had remembered blue on blue on blue and George had not known what game she had been playing when she had said rainbow blue and when she had said that hyacinth blue and Canterbury bell blue were not at all the same thing. The woman at the end of the hall was negroid art. That was negroid art and once one sees a thing and it goes click into place, it becomes by the very act of its so falling with its click into its right perspective, great. Everything is great seen in its right perspective, but George will never see that. George had said “Oh rot, what rot is this you’re talking” when for a moment she had realized her head—the bit here, the bit there, the way it fitted bit to bit—was two convex mirrors placed back to back. The two convex mirrors placed back to back became one mirror . . . as Fayne Rabb entered.