Hermione Read online

  Eugenia was cumbrous with her affinities but she had grown into the subsoil. Carl Gart was comforted, being at peace in the green shadows after the inland prairies and the stark glare of inimical Atlantic waters. In Hermione Gart, the two never fused and blended, she was both mossgrown, inbedded and at the same time staring with her inner vision on forever-tumbled breakers. If she went away, her spirit would break: if she stayed, she would be suffocated.

  She remembered the sort of thing that would suffocate her with sentiment; an owl her grandfather had kept in an old loft, a toad her brother had found unearthed near a wellhead in the process of being mortared, a litter of tiny moles about to be crushed flat beneath a garden shovel. She remembered the sort of thing that would mean to her—Pennsylvania. She did not know that Pennsylvania bears traces of a superimposed county-England and of a luscious beauty-loving Saxony. She could not know that the birdfoot violets she so especially cherished had far Alpine kinsfolk, that the hepaticas she called “American” grew in still more luminous cluster at the base of the Grammont, along the ridges of the Jura, in rock shelves above Leman and the Bodensee.

  She could not realize that there was affinity with Siberia when long nights beat them indoors and lamps shining upon tables were the same lamps that made Lithuanians look tenderly across dark tablecloths and that made sailors in Cornwall start, listening to sea-shouts. She could not know that no race is in itself integral but that each has its fibres elsewhere. She only felt that she was a disappointment to her father, an odd duckling to her mother, an importunate overgrown, unincarnated entity that had no place here. She realized in some atavistic cranny of her numbed brain that she would be herself and at peace if she had that great hound. Jock, breathing in her face, was an ungracious substitute . . . her instinct was to beat him off as he was not her dog but she saw instantly the inanity of her idea.

  five

  Jock was the colour of gingerbread, a homely, smutty colour. Moreover he was the colour of Minnie’s overcolourful hair. “Minnie is my sister” had been enjoined on her by Eugenia who said, “In our family my mother never referred to Nell or Carnia as daughters-in-law.” Minnie, Her’s sister-in-law, therefore, by a rule that had roots moss-grown in Pennsylvania, became by some illogical reasoning “my sister.” A sister was a creature of ebony strung with wild poppies or an image of ivory whose lithe hips made parallel and gave reflection of like parallel in a fountain basin. A sister would run, would leap, would be concealed under the autumn sumac or lie shaken with hail and wind, lost on some Lacedaemonian foothill. A sister would have companion hound, Hermione’s the more lithe, the more regular in fleetness, her sister’s heavier for whelping and more subtle and less of a rival in matter of speed, in manner of springing. A sister who owned such a hound . . . was supplanted by Minnie whose presence poor Jock must inevitably invoke.

  Jock on a woodpath meant Minnie lurking somewhere, but Minnie this stifling day, would be sure to have a headache. Secure in her preknowledge of Minnie and her headache, Her took the short way. She cut through undergrowth, stood a moment on a small ridge, looked down at a near springhouse. Flies buzzed negligently over wild carrot, and Queen Anne’s lace lay powder-green and powder-mauve in heavy shadow. Across a stretch of meadow were the beginnings of kitchen garden, turned-back hotbed frames, an unpretentious kennel.

  Her stooped to the springhouse door, ascertained that the cream in a blue bowl had astonishingly not “turned,” saw two flat pie plates sprinkled with raspberries. She stepped inside the door, heard the cold ripple of the concealed runnel that fed the flat dark stretch of springhouse water. Hermione shivered, seeing a face reflected in the water that was almost as unpleasing to her as the thought of Minnie. Forehead too high, hair too lank, eyes that stared and stared, blobs of inconsequent blackness. A face foreshortened in a slightly rippled surface may give back poor reflection. She did not consider this, remembering only that this summer was to have been her glory. This summer was to have been the summer, the summer for reflection, for a drawing together . . . the hard-earned olive chaplet. Nike, Athene gave her nothing . . . Love had not yet touched her. Gods stood afar oft . . . demigods would have needed no encouragement.

  Her bumped her head on the low door, dazzled by the heavy fall of sunlight. She saw a slight trail of dust hanging above the yew trees. Down the road someone had turned, skirting the Farrand meadows. The Farrands even had found Pennsylvania “dull” and “unrewarding” since the death of Russell Farrand. Her rarely thought of the Farrands, people with too much money. Strung to a pith of loyalty to her “class,” she had rarely dared consider what “money” could do. “The Farrands are really nice,” Eugenia put in, “though, you know” (tolerantly) “business people.”

  Business people seldom found their way to Gart Grange. It was Minnie’s constant wail that “Aunt Lydia had entertained differently in Philadelphia.” There was an Aunt Lydia, or had been, whose only tangible totem was a pin tray and two Victorian silver-topped dressing-table boxes which had appeared some days after Minnie’s wedding. Aunt Lydia had promised this, had promised that, had, it appeared on careful scrutiny, an address in North Philadelphia which after all (Eugenia said) explained it. Come and go of odd “university ladies,” too many sometimes and a dull perception that she, Her Gart, knew the very best people who after all (in Philadelphia) were so distinguished in their modest way and in their European affinities that she knew she would have small hope of cutting through them with any ulterior criticism. There was one thing left her to criticise . . . it was Her Gart precisely.

  “I know that I’m too old here” answered it. She was too old for this; “Mrs. Tryon have another teacake.” Her mathematics and her biology hadn’t given her what she dreamed of. Only now she knew that failing at the end meant fresh barriers, fresh chains, a mesh here. The degree almost gained would have been redemption, something she hardly realized, tutoring or something, teaching . . . something she had an inkling would bring her in, would have brought her in a “salary.” Demigods were far off . . . but gods were watching. She had the temerity to boast some sort of odd mind, the sort of thing that, in Philadelphia, could not see cones as of light set within cones, as of darkness. “I failed in conic sections.”

  The mind, galvanized almost to the point of extinction, had turned inward, had thrust Her Gart backward. The mind that had been a sort of lure, “Come here, a little further,” had denied Her. The gateway had been reached but at the last the gate had been slammed on Her. Her did not realize that the watching-near God had slammed a gate so that she should attain a wider vision. In Philadelphia people did not realize that life went on in varying dimension, here a starfish and there a point of fibrous peony stalk with a snail clinging underneath it. Pictures of that sort with a crane shadow passing across a wild cherry half in blossom would have explained something of the sort of painting that she would not have known existed. There was a sort of “composition” of elements that her mind, fused to the breaking point, now apprehended. The catch was that her perception was ahead of her definition. She could put no name to the things she apprehended, felt vaguely that her mother should have insisted on her going on with music.

  Music might have caught the trail of the grass as she ran on across the meadow and the deep note made by a fabulous bee that sprung into vision, blotting out the edge of the stables, almost blotting out the sun itself with its magnified magnificent underbelly and the roar of its sort of booming. The boom of the bee in her ear, his presence like an eclipse across the sun brought visual image of the sort of thing she sought for . . . it had not occurred to Her to try and put the thing in writing.

  II

  one

  Minnie met Her by the steps. Minnie said, “You stopped at the post office,” flung out like a sort of challenge. Minnie continued, “Are there any letters?” Her fumbled with the lot, trying not to have to obliterate the memory of of an eclipse of the sun by a huge bee (under a magnifying glass) by having to look at Minnie.

 
A huge bee lifted Her on translucent wings, flung straight upward, her legs either side of the stiff propeller-whirr of the wings, hung down into space. Her saw trees fly past her, trees darting downward, herself static. Trees showed clear in outline, but darker, all one colour, colour of dark cedars. Translucence of beewing veiled the terror of trees’ protoplasmic function. Her rode toward a new realization . . . “No, no letters,” not lifting her face to Minnie.

  Opposite in the shadow of the porch, she sensed fragrance, tendrils of honeysuckle blossom, café-au-lait she knew and wax-white like checkerberries. She opened her eyes. At her feet, heliotrope . . . Minnie was there waiting for the letters. A face would loom at her, freckles magnified across a drawn pale countenance. She would hate Minnie and lifting her eyes to meet those, round, well-set but drained of any colour, Her would force, “Oh Minnie . . . what a lovely dress you’ve got on.” Minnie must be flattered, compliment must fly and click and turn heels and bend gallantly. It was obvious that Minnie too was lonely though in an opposite direction. “I think Minnie, there’s no letter.”

  Jock bounded off in the direction of the toolhouse, leapt ecstatically, came back. Her pushed off Jock. Minnie must never see that other people or other people’s dogs liked Her. It was inevitable occasion, “Nobody loves me.” Minnie had married Bertrand Gart. My brother Bertrand Gart. Hermione hid her brother in her gesture, braced, apologetic, by the porch step. I won’t depend on Gart for greatness. Minnie was like some fraction to which everything had to be reduced. Minnie’s very presence depreciated the house front, steps, the symmetrical recumbent jade pillars of low carefully clipped terrace. Minnie had on black stockings, white shoes, semitransparent sprigged organdie. Don’t let her see I see her ruffles are set crooked. Straighten shoulders, don’t let Minnie see how terribly black stockings with soiled white shoes upset me. “What is that . . . spray thing I mean in your new organdie?” Ringed, washed-out blue eyes, Minnie and her eternal headaches. Escape, escape Minnie. “But there are” (more business) “letters.” Hermione handed Minnie Bertrand Gart’s letters affecting not to know that Minnie wanted the whole lot, was waiting for the whole lot, had just said, “I’ll take the lot to father.”

  Words that had not (in Philadelphia) been invented, beat about them: Oedipus complex, inferiority complex, claustrophobia. Words beat and sizzled and a word bent backward like a saw in a sawmill reversed, turned inward, to work horrible destruction. The word “father” as Minnie spoke it, reversed itself inward, tore at the inner lining of the thing called Her Gart. It tore her inner being so that she stood stiff, alert, trying in some undefined and ineffectual manner to be “fair.” What was it Minnie did to her, reversing machinery so that a simple word “father” wrought such untoward havoc?

  “Father” went with a river, a leap out from a boat, a forest where oaks obligingly dropped cups and saucers, acorns and their scattered woodhusks. Cups and saucers set upright on a flat stone while the wood was ringed with frail lavender, the low leafless Quaker-ladies or as some called them, bluets. “Father” was a run forward, a plunge backward; that thing had now no visible embodiment. Nevertheless to hear Minnie say “father” was a two-edged theft. It stole from Her a presence that left her (no one else had) alone and that again stole from her a presence: the thing that would have had that other hound, twin hounds, fleet-footed, the half of herself that was forever missing. If her father was also the father to . . . this thing, then the half of her, that twin-self sister would be forever blighted. Hermione knew she was fantastically over-wrought, bending down closer, then hiding her face to explain, “Jock only likes me as I take him to get letters.”

  Jock sometimes carried a newspaper . . . but Hermione could not trust him not to drop the letters. She tried to concentrate on Jock . . . remembering how Minnie had said “father.” It was still incredible to Hermione, though she tried to fend off odd superstition, that she and Minnie should call the same person “father.” Hiding her face against the homely ginger of Jock’s soft wool, she tried to dissemble: “Minnie, I will take him to the lake creek, he needs a whole day bathing.” Minnie would not answer. There was no use thinking that she would ever answer. Minnie was there, a barometer that showed always glowering weather. Her eyes were the colour of mauve blotting paper that has faded almost white and is smudged with inkmarks. The inkmarks must be because Minnie had a headache, rings under Minnie’s woebegone, sad eyes. It was incredible how a creature of Minnie’s disposition could take it out of everyone. She set for them all a standard, “At our Aunt Lydia’s.” Aunt Lydia had never even deigned to call on Minnie, perhaps there was no Lydia . . . silver boxes late for a wedding, don’t prove anything.

  It was an incredible thing. Minnie made her feel eight, nine with a page of those fractions which all have to be resolved to something different because one of them is of a different common . . . something. Denominator. Even the least thought of add, subtract made Her feel blurred, she could not ever again casually deal with fractions in composite values. Minnie however was, she knew it, the one fraction that reduced them all, as family, to that level.

  two

  There were things she would never get into words, mixed up with mathematics, one was Bertrand. Bertrand was a thing she could not get into words for huge volumes were waiting, had not been opened, perhaps had not even been translated. There were huge volumes that would have explained Bertrand, but she could not visualize those volumes. Her Gart was then no prophet. Volumes would have explained Bertrand coming to her room, Bertrand flung face downward on the low couch under the window pulling out her outgrown little volumes. Bertrand pulled out Alice, Jane Austen, he it was who had first brought her Jane Eyre. Bertrand brought books for Her, had got the Household Dickens. Hermione had no compass, no magnet, no iron-filings. She did not know why and how she loved her brother. He did not know how and why he loved Hermione. They stared at one another like two hawk-moths, like two hummingbird beetles, like two long-throated cranes flown from somewhat Nordic centres to this verdant mid-tropic Pennsylvania. Hermione had not been able to predict “cerebralism,” “narcissism,” nor cerebral-erotic affinities.

  That was all there was between them (enough), grey eyes that stared at grey eyes with some unexpressed and undefined craving, the craving of the fiend almost for his narcotic. Bertrand later turned to mathematics. Hermione, in the same spirit, later turned to Bertrand’s bookshelves. Bertrand had bought her Jane Eyre, she would be one with Bertrand. Someone should have told Her that Bertrand Gart’s anodyne would be alien to her. Bertrand Gart’s incredible gift for mathematics was his anesthesia. Hermione reached out . . . but Celestial Mechanics proved a barrier. She had failed, even the beginning, Conic Sections. She had failed to reach Bertrand. She had failed, though she could not have then defined it, to attain the anesthesia that her odd brain sought for.

  How could anyone predict that Bertrand would marry Minnie? Nowadays huge volumes predict such things. You may read huge volumes, find names for these things. In those days those astounding Freudian and post-Freudian volumes had not found their way into the common library. Hermione Gart would have been astounded in those days to learn that “Oedipus” links up with the most modern prophets. She did not think of Greek, except in so far as Calypso was the name of an island in a neighboring river where she and Bertrand had once gone to find wild adder’s-tongue and maidenhair fern. Pond-lilies in the half-stagnant reaches of the little side streams had been connected in her mind with Bertrand. “Bertrand, why is the island called Calypso’s Island?” Bertrand had then told Her. “It’s the name of a sort of goddess in the Greek Mythology.”

  The Greek Mythology existed for Her only in the vaguest outline. It existed for Her in so much as Pennsylvania existed. “Bertrand, why do they call mockorange Philadelphus? Is it because it is from Philadelphia?” Bertrand answered every question anyone could ask him. Bertrand said, “No. It’s because of Ptolemy Philadelphus in Egypt.” Now how did Bertrand know that? Obviously, because he had that fl
ower book on his shelves. Later he began his connecting “link,” his theorum of general mathematical biological affinity. “Bertrand . . . why do they call mock orange Philadelphus?”

  How could anyone predict that Bertrand would marry Minnie? He didn’t know many “girls.” One day Bertrand called Hermione upstairs. He said “I have something to show you!” Bertrand had a way of producing snakes’ eggs like the proverbial magician from the top-hat or raccoons or even minute wild birds or moles which he would manage to extract from nests and put back without Tim the gardener knowing. Bertrand held something in his hands as he had held that tiny mole that day. Hermione said, “What is it?” Bertrand’s eyes glowered in a strange way. His face was whiter even than usual. Hermione gave up guessing. He let it slip from his hands. It was the colour of the underleaf of the adder’s-tongue they had found on Calypso’s Island. It was burnt red-brick colour. Even then, staring, Hermione thought it might yet be some new-found serpent.

  She couldn’t grasp what it was, even when she saw it. She stared at this thing as if the red-brown strand of poor little Minnie Hurloe’s hair had been all the writhing horrors of the famed Medusa. She couldn’t even then make any formal gesture. “Bertie . . .”