Hermione

by Hilda Doolittle

  “I am tired of this fur.” George was at her, speaking to her “Don’t always talk such nonsense. What did the woman tell you?” George was white under the slight sway and sway of the light in the long corridor. They sat facing a polished door at the end of a long corridor. Walls rumbled like breakers drawing backward. “It wasn’t what she said. It was the way she said it.” People in Shakespeare go in pairs, but not fools. I am a fool. “It wasn’t exactly what she said . . . it was the thing back of the thing she said . . . that mattered.” “Wh-aat was the thing back of the thing that mattered?” A wolf face; a wolfs face was looking at Her. “You must get me in quick George, not loiter on the driveway.” “Am I likely?” “There’s something wrong here”—she caught at a straw that sank, and sinking, whirled Her into obliteration with it. “I’ve got a—sore throat or something . . .”

  II

  one

  Banality that was a sore throat made Her answer Minnie. “I do wish Minnie you would answer the telephone. It’s so difficult.” Her sat on a rug just inside the sitting room door. A green on green that was pine trees climbing heavenward was the wide gilt-framed picture. The tiny children painted in were merest smudges of colour; a dab of red—somebody’s jacket, a dab of cobalt—that was somebody’s wide wee skirt. Skirt like a paper doll, it was such fun dressing paper dolls only mama should have lent me that old paint box. The box was in the attic and brushes were stiff and there was a smell of turpentine.

  Minnie said he must see Her. “He says he’s waiting. He says he’ll just wait.” “Well, go hang up the receiver.” “He says when it’s hung up, he’ll start ringing.” “Well go to the kitchen, ask Mandy for the meat ax, smash it.” “He’ll come then right out.” Minnie was interested. Minnie scented romance. “Oh Minnie, I wish you’d do something for me.” Her never asked anything of Minnie. She seemed suddenly sunk to Minnie’s level. What after all, did poor old Minnie matter? After all, it was darned dull for Minnie. Who would want to marry Bertrand? Minnie had married Bertie thinking she was going up in the world, she never thought she’d be stuck in a barn of a place with people with hushed voices. Her wished she had some chewing gum to offer Minnie “Minnie do you know, I think chewing gum would be good for my throat.” Minnie was looking at Her. “You look sick.” “I think I am. Will you tell George.” Minnie went obediently back to the telephone, playing a major role for a change. Oh let Minnie be leading lady in this show. Her hair is against her, her hair ought to be beautiful. Do you know, given the right environment, Minnie might have been right. It’s this dreadful beauty of abstraction that’s done us all in. What is the darn use of coping with the gracile suavity of (say) a fern, of (say) that sort of sperm-pod of moss propagating seen under the microscope. Minnie never understood the deprivation of pure beauty. She ought to have scent. It would make her happy. “Minnie do you ever use scent?” Minnie was standing by Her. “He says he’ll ring up later.” Minnie was red headed, such a common creature. She said, “You look sick.”

  It might have been February. It might have been August. Heat pulsed and burnt but the flowers were wrong. There were great king-carnations, maroon, the colour of paper on chocolate—that thick colour; mama should have let me have the paint box. Why when people don’t want things, do they keep them? Mama should have let me have that paint box, should have given away that paint box, so I should give away Her but I keep Her out of some outworn sense of odd association. Paints worn thin with holes in the middle. I don’t want Her. I am tired of Her . . . It might have been May with flowers drooping from a branch. Someone had sent white lilac. “What month is it?”

  Someone said “Sh-ssh” and she turned over on a pillow. Someone said from somewhere “People keep sending flowers. There are too many in here.” Someone said “Sit up. Now hold her shoulders”; someone said “I’ll call you if there is any alteration,” someone said “Under your tongue. Now, don’t try to swallow it,” someone said “No, no, no. It’s serious,” someone went on and went on and it went on through days, through years, through many years for the lilac bloomed again and this time it was purple. “Mrs. Lowndes keeps sending lilac. I do wish she hadn’t broken her engagement.”

  Minnie hissed sibilantly over all this “She looks so sick.” Minnie burnt, a zinnia in the darkness. Aren’t common people after all, the right ones? What is achievement? What has it brought me? Then she dreamt she was waiting for examinations and had forgotten logarithm. Logarithms. Something binomial and something conic that was a section. She went on breaking test tubes and the hydrochloric acid was spilt and someone said “She needn’t take it. There’s no use forcing these things” and a friend of someone who knew Minnie sat on the bed and said “But you aren’t sick. Now listen. Elijah arose at the voice of the Lord and walked. Now he was old and you are young. You aren’t sick. You can walk.” But when she got up someone called and Minnie called and Minnie and Mrs. Banes (it was Mrs. Banes) went out whispering “There was no harm trying it.”

  It was quite obvious to Her that there was no pain. That life was not. That material had no existence. She did not need that thing proved. Someone said “These Christian Scientists do more harm than good. Now I remember a woman who had a growth—” It was odd how many voices could crowd into a room filled with pulse of August heat and filled with winter lilac. The white lilac flowered again and then lilac stopped, altogether, coming. “They’ve gone. They left this message.” Someone read something on a card, and Her asked for it. A face looked astonished at Her. “Then you’re—you’re—better!” “Oh, I’m all right.” A feeble voice came from a hollow but it left no runnels as of a red-hot iron on a hollow ice tube. There were no runnels where her throat was. “But don’t put your arm out of the blanket,” and someone was reading to Her, “So sorry not to see you. They wouldn’t let me come in. Lillian.” Then the voice explained disapprovingly that there was another card but it was too difficult to make out that scraggy writing and Her said “I must see it.”

  It made pattern on her tired brain. It brought back summer long ago, so long ago, a summer before white lilac, before purple, before white again and then lilac had stopped coming. A summer long ago before there was a Fayne, before there was a Her. There was no Her sitting in a dining room that lifted and sank and lifted a faded bowl of mountain wild azalea. “Someone should send azalea.” “What Miss Gart?” Her looked at a strange face but it was not a strange face. It was a face that had been there for eternity through white lilac and then purple and then white. “You’ve been here then three summers?” “Oh my dear—just rest back.” “No. I mean it. You’ve been here just three summers.”

  A summer before these three summers (Tim grubbed up one bush, there was one by the old hedge with the wild cherry) there had been upheaval; Eugenia saying “But you can’t marry George Lowndes” and “That George person” that was Fayne before she saw George. There was something in everything and three summers are a long time. “I’ve had a long time.” “Yes it’s been a long siege. Started before Christmas.” Christmas. What was Christmas? A bird had done a trapeze-turn across a window like a bird on a string hung on the Christmas tree and I am the word Aum and I am Tree. I am Tree exactly. George never would love a tree, she had known from the beginning. If you follow your instinct from the first you will be right. I knew George could never love a tree properly.

  Now she saw Tree and I am Tree and I am the word Aum and I am Her exactly. For the writing was what had started things and the writing was the same writing. She had read “I am coming back to Gawd’s own god-damn country” and she had read “Go straight to the telephone . . . to see a girl I want you to see.” She had read that and the other while she had suffocated and she had flung herself before a window in a low sewing chair (in which she never sewed) and it was still suffocating. “It’s so—so ho-ot.” Minnie had said “None of you realize how this heat affects me” and perhaps Minnie was right. “None of you realize how this heat affects me” Her said, for she was a fool out of Shakespeare and if
she went on and on saying the same thing perhaps in time people would realize that the thing back of the thing was the thing that mattered. “Then take this woollen coat off.” The woman who was the strange woman who went with winter lilac took off her woollen jacket. “I don’t mean hot in that sense.” The woman treated Her as if Her were incapable of knowing what Her was. I am the word AUM. I am Her. The word was with God. I am a fool in Shakespeare. There’s no use getting anything right ever for George had written “I am coming back to Gawd’s own god-damn country” like a harlequin. Now he was writing that he was leaving Gawd’s own god-damn country. Why didn’t he stay put somewhere?

  It was obvious that people should think before they call a place Sylvania. People are in things. Things are in people and people should think before they call a place Sylvania. I am the word AUM. The word was with God, the place was Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania was some sort of Lilliput or Gargantua, things like that, places like that, nowhere was Pennsylvania.

  “Nurse, what state do you come from?” “Oh, I’m from Pennsylvania.” There was no use. Nurse Dennon was tying up odds and ends and bits and bits and odds and ends. It was astonishing the amount of work she could make out of nothing. There was something in that. “Nurse.” “Yes, Miss Gart?” “Do you think I’m too old to take up nursing?” Nurse Dennon went on winding up bits and odds and ends and odds and ends and bits. “Oh-o. I don’t know.” She was mumbling over pins, was making something, had forgotten Her. Nurse Dennon (I suppose she is Miss Dennon) is from Pennsylvania. Then she is out of the same sort of thing. I won’t get any change out of her, for people are in names and names are in people. “People should think before they call a place Sylvania.” “What Miss Gart?” Miss Dennon condescended to look up, “I don’t know the place. Is it perhaps in Russia?” “No. It’s a place I read about. It was mostly trees. It was settled by—by some sort of sect, people who believed in silence, in God in silence.” “Like Quakers?” “Yes. Like Quakers. It was settled by people like Quakers. It was called (I don’t know why) Sylvania.” “It sounds Russian.” “Yes. It sounds Russian like Lithuania. Is Lithuania Russian? I think some of them were Polish, some of the settlers. It was heavy with trees, a sort of paradise of trees, trees, trees, trees; dogwood, liriodendron, you know, the tulip tree.” “Yes, Miss Gart.” Miss Dennon went on politely listening. “People, I always feel are in things and things I always feel are in people.” “Yes, Miss Gart.” “You know, nurse, my name’s Hermione.”

  The person who was Nurse Dennon dropped her sewing. Rather she put it carefully in the corner of the armchair, her substitute for dropping. She came and stood by the bedside. Her apron was starched and her skirt was starched and she seemed altogether set in a cone, a sort of cone, a sort of thing like the jack-in-the-box that ought to fall over when it was pulled out of its box but Miss Dennon stood on her own feet like Ham, Shem and Japheth. Miss Dennon, it was obvious, stood on her own feet. “Are you a little tired of talking?” “No. I’m tired of not talking. It seems I have never talked. I want to talk and talk forever.” “Then don’t you want to see your—your—mother?” “No. I don’t want to see my mother. She isn’t.” “I wish Miss Gart now you are getting better you would tell me what’s upset you.” The figure spoke as Ham, Shem and Japheth might speak if Ham, Shem and Japheth could speak. It made it interesting. “I don’t know. I do know. It would take too long to explain it.” “Well, won’t you try to?” Miss Dennon made a motion backwards as if to draw up her chair and drag up her bag of sewing. “Oh, I’ll try to.”

  “What is your name Miss Dennon?” “Amy.” “May I call you Amy?” “Please do Miss Gart.” “My name’s Hermione.” “Please do—Her—Hermione. It seems quite too beautiful a name to be used in conversation.” “Yes isn’t it? They call me Her. I am called Her.” “That seems a little—I mean a little too short.” “Yes. That’s my way. I am too—too remote you know and too—too silly. I am both.” “I didn’t say Her was silly. I said it was—short.” “Well, didn’t you mean silly?” “No. I can’t say that I did.” Amy spoke like Ham, Shem and Japheth. There was that about her. “It’s this way Amy . . . (You call your doll or your toy dog by a name and it becomes your dog, your toy doll. Nurse Dennon became by the same token her very own Ham, Shem and Japheth. It was some sort of figure set in a frigid temple, where people would come and offer prayers and where people would tear their hearts out and it would never listen. Yet if you happened to know its name was Ham, Shem and Japheth it would do anything for you. You had only to address it by its name and it would do anything. Remove mountains. Its outer or world name is Amy Dennon. Its inner or occult name is Hamshem.) Hamshem went on sewing.

  “I can’t say that there was anything special. You see I was to marry George Lowndes.” “The gentleman who sent carnations?” “Did he? They seemed wrong somehow. He never could love a tree properly. You see he couldn’t love Her. I mean he couldn’t.” “No, no of course he couldn’t.”

  Hamshem was running a seam, did not look up, answered (there was that about her) automatically. It was like putting a penny in the slot and knowing what will come out. It was interesting that nothing came out that you did not expect to come out. It was the greatest comfort. “I went on afterwards for a little. Of course Fayne wrote me letters. They were terrible. She accused me of having plotted with him to upset her. How was I to know that?” “How indeed were you to know that?” “Her mother came out one morning in a pair of rubbers.” “Was it raining?” “Yes. It had been raining a sort of slushy snow-rain. She came out in her rubbers.” “People should wear rubbers when it’s raining.” “I don’t know what upset me. I laughed and laughed. My mother used to say when I laughed like that, ‘It’s what your grandmother used to say when I laughed like that,’ (so she must have laughed like that), ‘there’s a black rose growing in your garden.’”

  Carnation Lily Lily Rose. “Things had been going on like that for a long time. I mean we had some tickets sent us. They were from Fayne. Nellie came out, was interested, then was frigid. It was Nellie asked me in to meet her. Nellie was away during the summer. They go to Bridgeport.” “Bridgeport’s pretty. I had a patient there once.” “They came back.” “People don’t stay longer than September. That’s what made it so nice.” “I wanted more than anything to see snow against white breakers.” “There was a line of breakwater and my how it did froth sometimes.” “That’s what I mean. But I wanted to go to Point Pleasant. Minnie had the cottage.” “Cottage life I always think most pleasant.” “Yes. We had a cottage. It wasn’t altogether the actual surf. But we took the canoe up the salt creeks, further than anybody. My brother used to take me in vacations. Then he married.” “I know. Having a brother married—” “Not that I minded Minnie—” “One never does mind. My sister-in-law is Bessie.” “Well you know what I mean.” “Yes. She always wanted everything different. She insisted on moving the hall things into the back parlor and she insisted on breaking up our little conservatory where mother had begonias.” “Yes. Isn’t it funny? Minnie wanted the front garden beds grubbed up to be used for a sun parlour. We had quite enough light anyway. She insisted she was delicate.” “They do.” “Minnie did. But you know sometimes I’m so sorry for poor Minnie.” “It was that way with Bessie. My how she did adore Frank. My brother you know, Frank Dennon. He had flour mills.” “Oh mills. How interesting.” “Yes. We used to run about (in my father’s day) and get covered with flour dust. But of course, then Frank (he was most progressive) had new bins and great improvements. They’re well off.” “Oh. I’m glad they’re well off. You see with Bertrand (my brother Bertrand) it was science. You see science doesn’t lead one anywhere.” “Now I wouldn’t say that. Look at the doctors.” “Oh doctors. Of course with doctors. But that’s making things fit somehow. I mean abstractions are so frightening.”

  “Don’t you think you’ve talked yourself out, Miss Gart?” “My name’s Her.” “Don’t you?” “I have only just begun. I mean about Fayne. Her uncle is
a doctor.” “Yes? Where does he practice?” “I don’t know. Somewhere vaguely in North Philadelphia.” “Oh North Philadelphia—” “Yes. Isn’t it funny the way we all feel about North Philadelphia. I mean I think there was some trouble. He was very advanced. Fayne read a lot of books, wanted to lend me some books, psychoanalysis, German books.” “Of course the German books are very solid.” “That’s what I think. I’ve forgotten all my German . . . Now German came clear and ritterspuren and hummingbird blue and Her said “Yes, I think I want the light out.”

  two

  Now with the light out, eyes turned inward, words formed, made gigantic pattern, German that ran on and on and the translations read odd, didn’t mean the same thing. German had caught one in a mesh, it was inferiority complex if you translated it. Fayne’s uncle was translating it; it was mother and father and Oedipus complex and it made pattern on a brain that rose from a black mesh. A white spider rose from a black mesh; there were people who loved . . . differently. There were people with suppressions; if George had let himself love, had let herself love, if George had not kissed Fayne, if George had really kissed Fayne ran its ornate pattern, made Gothic pattern. I am not Gothic. George Lowndes is Gothic. I can’t see the trees for the forest. I can’t see the forest for the trees. Could he have caught Her?

  Light made intricate pattern on a black sky. Light heaved and blazed, made pattern like white wisteria brushing in a storm across a dark wire netting. The screen door wouldn’t fasten and white lilac (it was white lilac) makes a pattern. Minnie said Bertrand had disgraced her. Bertrand had disgraced her. Bertrand cut knife patterns into a damask cloth. Mama said Minnie was her sister. O sister my sister, O fleet swallow, the world’s division divideth us. Yes. Because there was no use, the trolley was already empty, people got out at the end of the line, a transfer please conductor and Nellie said you could trade the yellow ticket for a blue one. Things were in people, people were in things. “Hamshem.”