Hermione Read online

  She knew then as she saw it what it must be. She had never considered seriously the little woman that Bertrand had one day brought out to see them. She had patronized Minnie Hurloe, been kind to her since she was so obviously not important. She remembered the little squeal that Minnie had affected at the sight of the raccoon that Bertrand had taken them to see behind the wild-cherry at the far field hedge. Minnie was however not now to be disregarded. In that red lock, was the whole of Minnie Hurloe.

  three

  Mrs. Bertrand Gart regarded Hermione Gart, standing, head lowered, listlessly shaping an odd assortment of envelopes that wouldn’t fit together. One longish yellow envelope protruded . . . she lost sight of the others, trying to make the longish yellow envelope fit the others. Her eyes saw nothing but envelopes; Minnie still covertly demanded the lot, wanted to go over them, sort them herself, dash in and out, looking for people, Hermione’s little job. Minnie had taken so many little jobs, “But you never let me do the flowers.” Hermione would not let Minnie take the letters. Minnie would not be able to remember . . . anything . . . her headache always interfered when there were uninteresting things to do. “I never dare take anything.”

  Minnie stood afar off blighting the garden because once she had almost pruned away a little old-fashioned ribbon-rose that had been put there by Her’s grandmother, out of her own garden. Things that needed intuition . . . how can you tell anybody? That garden had been a riot of bleeding-heart and columbine; “My mother liked bleeding-heart, columbine and johnny-jump-ups,” Eugenia’s fervid explanation of that corner. How could anyone tell anyone about things? “Mother wasn’t angry, Minnie, it was just a sort of sentiment. How could anyone hope ever to explain to Minnie that that particular little bush hadn’t ever been touched by anyone, a sort of sacrament, preserving a tiny figure with white cap and apron, snipping with a disproportionate pair of garden scissors. Death was horrible. The old lady had fallen down in the heat, under that same rose-tree.

  Death and life were inexorably entangled. The whole place was a graveyard. Minnie was haunted by things that had no palpable explanation. It was impossible to begin to try to explain to Minnie. Certain days of the year were set aside, inexorable Chinese-like fidelity of Eugenia. Hermione could not keep track of what she called in her childhood Eugenia’s “still days.” How could, then, poor Minnie?

  “No, Minnie, mother’s not hurt . . . it’s just . . . it’s just. It was so impossible to rise from ashes, to drag out things that she herself didn’t dare face. Hermione must be loyal to Eugenia; it was impossible to tell Minnie. She compromised, “family matters.” Minnie would flare up “You leave me out of everything.” Hermione went so far as to chafe the bare hot hands of Minnie. “Don’t be hysterical . . . she lost . . . she lost a baby.” It was impossible to explain to Minnie that the baby was one between herself and Bertrand, a girl, stillborn. “I didn’t know there was another baby.” “There wasn’t exactly. I mean it didn’t breathe . . . it wasn’t buried with the others.” The whole thing was too horrible. How explain to Minnie a sentiment about a stillborn child?

  Minnie was right. In some horrible torturous cranny of her inferior little being, she was right however. There was reason in her hysteria, in her tantrums . . . but how explain? In order to explain to Minnie, Hermione would have to explain to herself things that had no palpable explanation.

  Shadow crept up, heavy metal toward the lawn step. If the shadow crept further it would cut Her down, a black blade of black-scythe, the little old lady haunted that corner of the garden. The little old lady dominated a rose-ribbon, a ribbon-rose forever. Shouldn’t Eugenia rather have let Minnie prune the bush down? It was obviously (or had then been) the one untidy corner of the kitchen garden. The kitchen garden was more or less understood to be common property. A little old lady with great scissors . . . Minnie. Minnie tyrannized with her eternal headaches, “The specialist said I might die at any minute.” Minnie had washed-out, ringed-round pale eyes, the sort of person that would live forever.

  Her Gart knew prophetically that Gart would fall, be cut through by railroads, factory chimneys, that Bertrand and Carl Gart (and even the Gart formula?) would be extinguished but not Minnie. The Grange shadow lengthened, came near, it would cut her feet off. Imperiously, without letting Her say another word to Minnie, her ankles dragged Her forward. Her ankles, concentrated terror (that scythe shadow) impelled Her Gart across the wide porch . . . a hand, touching the housefront found sanctuary at an altar. Her pushed through the screen door.

  III

  one

  Sanctuary spilled fragrance, the cool hall. There was a squat bowl set on a low corner table. She had set the lilies there herself, remarked that they still stood upright, a shoulder brushing might upset them. Those flat lotus-pod-shaped stemholders were better than the glass ones. Her eyes, too wide, opened, blurred over the impression. Like the first colour-impressionist she saw blobs, perceived matte colour as pure tone. The wood-lilies were thumbed in from a laden palette. Orange was put in, with a thumb, against Van Dyke brown of seasoned woodwork. Her let eyes refocus, saw things clearly, mid-Victorian “interior.” The mid-Victorian “interior” became again classic, Flemish, something out of a long gallery, “Flemish school” from those eternal volumes laid flat, with charts and diagrams, on a carpet, threadbare upstairs, downstairs with woolly fringes before an open fireplace. Every sort of school of painting must sustain Her. Twin candlesticks gave out another light, and one pewter platter with dents. The lilies made the place live. Did I stare too hard at Minnie?

  Minnie was zinnia-colour, no colour of wild-lilies. A zinnia was a flat vegetable sponge, sucking up sun, never giving out sun. Those lilies were the sun-self, spotted she knew like the wings of beetles. Beetle-lilies. Did Minnie see I saw her black stockings with white slippers? She didn’t see I saw her. “She didn’t see I saw her” repeated time on end and in time to the giant clock-tick, hypnotized, numbed Her. She needed to be hypnotized, numbed; a growing dislike of Minnie brought with it renewal of rodent guilt gnawing. “But what can one do for her” didn’t do much good. “It’s this summer weather . . . she didn’t see I saw her.”

  The screen door hadn’t made the customary little click. Her turned back to see to it. Gart lawn made a jade triangle and the box hedge at the back merged so flatly with the forest that forest and box made one barrier; Gart, Gart barrier. Her pulled to the screen door, clicked it inside . . . must keep it fastened. She waded back down the hall where lilies reflected lilies in bright surface of dark parquet floor. Under her feet there were waxed lozenges of wood, fitted carefully to lozenges of waxed wood. The familiar slippery woodwork brought familiar admonition, “Be careful of the hall floor.”

  The mind of Her Gart was a patchwork of indefinable association. She must escape Gart and Gart Grange, the Nessus shirt of guilt, phobia, rehabilitation. To be rehabilitated meant tearing fibre and flesh out with the Nessus shirt of “Be careful of the hall floor,” and Minnie’s “I know you never liked me.”

  Her Gart clutched at the upright stairpost, it was buoy to her drowning. The floor went round and the smeared-up blobs of impressionistic lilies. She clung to one thing: “This bit of Berne carved wood is pretty.” She perceived that she had picked up the little tray for visiting cards, to which the other little table, with wings eternally down-folded, was permanently dedicated. The Berne wood was mellow, contrasted with the lacquer-like surface of the little table, it seemed almost porous; strange tobacco-coloured wood that didn’t go, that did go with their house. The European wood seemed soft, permeable, like pine-needles. In contrast, Her thought appositely, their lirio-dendron and magnolia seemed hard ebony. Trees, trees, trees . . . this particular plaque of grape and grape leaf was originally meant perhaps for breadtray or fruit platter. The thing had taken on character with years, was right here. Minnie had a way of making Eugenia and her rightness and discrimination wrong. How has Eugenia stood it? Minnie was gaping at Her, everywhere she looked was Minnie.
Something’s happened, something’s happened to Gart, everywhere; in the bowl of slightly jaded (she saw now coming nearer) lilies, “I must change those lilies,” in the family portrait of Pius Wood (Minnie insisted was not a Benjamin West), in the plaque of grape and flat grape leaf to hold visiting cards. Things make people, people make things. Minnie made Gart hallway and the wood lilies and Pius Wood so much junk. She ate into things, predicted inferiority complex, words that had no place in the consciousness of Her.

  Words beat and formed unformulated syllables. Her didn’t understand Gart and Bertrand and Carl and the acid, acid Minnie that ate into them . . . call it life so simply. I’m not at home in Gart. I’m not at home out of Gart. I am swing-swing between worlds, people, things exist in opposite dimension. She waded through more darkness, into another light patch. The dining room was empty. I’ll get fresh flowers here too. She struck another swing door with flat narrow hand and plunged into outer darkness. She felt her way along the narrow long passage, automatically with flat hand struck another swing door. It opened outward, revealed space, cool red tiles, brick red that ran toward a funnel of green that was the open window. The unscreened window looked out on green on green on green. “Mandy, I don’t see, with that window wide open that way, how you can keep the flies out.”

  Her stepped precisely on flat tiles, a child game remembered. Her foot was just too long to avoid crack in tile. Her feet had been small in the large square of tile, had been bigger, had almost not fitted. Her feet did not fit any longer into the kitchen tiles. Mandy was stoning cherries. Plunge hands into the wide deep corn-coloured bowl and help Mandy. “Mandy, I don’t see how yon keep the flies out.” Reprimand Mandy, find some excuse to stay here.

  She had found the excuse, realized what had brought her, “Oh, your letter.” Mandy’s letter was postmarked Georgia. It was the usual letter. The carefully-spaced writing was more conventionally careful than any of the writing on any of the letters. Postmarks on letters. There was the usual bundle. She had forgotten what had brought her to the kitchen. It was Mandy’s letter.

  two

  “Here’s your letter, Mandy.” Her placed the letter carefully beside the deep bowl. Deep bowl holding water, cherries sunk to the bottom of the great bowl, not their black cherries, not their red cherries, not their ox-heart cherries. “Whose are these cherries? I thought we’d gathered all the cherries.” “That little back-at-the-hedge tree. No one ever touches it.” “That’s not a cherry tree for picking. Once Grandmama made cherry brandy from it but it wasn’t even good for cherry brandy. That little back-hedge tree isn’t meant for picking.” “I tell you no black man is ever good at picking. I tell you Tim done miss the best tree.”

  “Cherry picking isn’t rightly part of gardening.” Her fell into the rhythm of Mandy’s speech, the moment she began to speak to Mandy, “A gardener is a gardener, a black gardener is as good as a white gardener. There’s no need discriminating.” Mandy would appreciate that last affectation.

  “Dis-criminating,” she went on with it, let it sink into Mandy’s appreciative consciousness (there was no one for appreciating the fine distinctions of the English language like their Mandy) “there is no use. Man is man. A man climbs a tree with a basket, brings it back full, strips the tree of cherries.” “You don’t know what you’re saying. A man ain’t a man. A black man is a black man. You don’t get no black man rightly to pick cherries.” “I don’t see that a black man makes any difference.” They could go on this way for hours, argue anthropomorphically. Argument took on abstraction like a Platonic dialogue with Mandy, finesse, aplomb, subtlety. “I don’t see that a black man makes any difference . . .”

  Her slipped a white hand into the deep bowl, black arm lifted from the deep bowl. White hand clutched hard smooth pebble-surface of berries, eyes discriminated, “These things aren’t worth cooking.” “These yere makes better jam than others.” Mandy had her formula. This, this, this. Fish, somedays, weren’t eatable. Berries, certain days, weren’t worth picking. Sun rose and sun set. The rising of the Pleiades, things out of Virgil, out of Hesiod, influenced Mandy. “Nonsense.” The kids, the Hyades, the Pleiades. Things out of Hesiod made Mandy cook beans on Tuesday. “Well, then who in this yere house makes better jam than we do?” “We being Mandy, no one in this or any house. But these are wild things.” “Wild black cherries picked a’Monday.” “Mandy—you’re mad, Mandy.”

  You’re not mad, Mandy. Garden cherries were over long since. These were small bitter wild ones. “Not worth cooking.” Red-black made mulberry-coloured black-red stain on Her’s white wrist. “They’re not worth all this trouble.”

  three

  Flat hand beat open the swing door. Darkness. The other door. “I must get some fresh azaleas.” Wild azaleas were dropping honeysucklelike long florets on the dining room table. “It’s incredibly hot suddenly.” Mind swung to and fro. It’s hot, it’s hot, it’s too hot suddenly.

  Hermione saw the letter on the top of the fat wedge of letters was addressed “Miss Gart.” It was a thin letter, foreign thin envelope, thin grey washed-out sea-colour. She saw the letter was from George. I must have missed it. She swung to and fro in the dining room, the bowl of half-withered azaleas swung to and fro in the dining room. It’s from George.

  She sat down on a hard upright dining room chair set against the side wall. The screened dining room window showed Gart lawn this side of the stable wall, grey as covered with sea mist. It’s too hot here. Gart is set like a bowl in this wood. It’s too hot here. A canoe seemed rippling between weeds. If I could go alone to Point Pleasant but Eugenia’s given the cottage to Minnie for the summer . . . Hermione wanted to go alone, to get away from this thing (huge scrawled-over handwriting taking up, in one sentence, the whole of a wide square of distinguished thin sea-grey paper): “Hermione, I’m coming back to Gawd’s own god-damn country.”

  “George is coming back.” Hermione spoke lifelessly to Eugenia. Eugenia was sitting in the little morning room that was no more than a glassed-in conservatory sort of odd-cupboard, except for the little shallow step down, almost part of the dining room. Her had caught that glimpse of Eugenia as she looked up from her letter. She said, “George is coming back,” and trailed lifelessly after her own words toward Eugenia out of the dining room into the little morning room to get away from the dining room wall that was swinging, swinging, that was swinging a bowl of half-wilted wild azaleas with it.

  “It’s incredibly hot.” “Yes, isn’t it? George who?” “George.” She had forgotten the name of George. “Why George.” “Not that incredible Lowndes person?” “Yes, wasn’t he? I mean incredible.” “Why has he written to you?” “I don’t know.” “Where has he written to you?” “Why here, to the Grange, Werby, Delaware County, Pennsylvania.” “Stupid. I don’t mean—I mean where was he written from?” “Why didn’t you say from? He’s written me from—from Italy.” “I remember—” Eugenia would be remembering. Everyone remembered something. Mandy remembered Georgia. “Venice that spring—” Everything was something to everyone but nothing was anything to Her.

  I am Her. I am Hermione. I want to get away to the sea. “Why must Minnie have the cottage?”

  Hermione picked up the thin grey envelope lying in the creased summer material of her flowered dress. A tiny bow of the same flowered material chafed at her throat. She pulled at the round opening of the same material, fanned herself vigorously with the thin wide square of foreign paper. The wind made only the slightest little flutter of the ribbon on her undergarment; things stuck fast, she remembered she had on only one straight one-piece undergarment, the dress was almost thick enough not to see through.

  She felt now she musn’t get up, Eugenia would be sure to see she had no petticoat on. She felt too the whole linen one-piece dress would bear imprint of her hot sides, her back . . . her legs stretched under the one-piece summer garment . . . “Where from?” Her Gart started upright, stopped erratic fanning. “. . . from? Why, the Grange woods, I ran b
ack the short way . . . the cream hasn’t even curdled.” “I said Lowndes, where,” Eugenia shouted as if Her were a little deaf, staring with wide eyes as the deaf do, “has this Lowndes written you from?”

  “Oh—from—” Her Gart turned over the bit of paper. It occurred to her again that it was incredible (Eugenia was right) and preposterous that George should say just that, “Gawd’s own god-damn country.” Her shoulder blades jabbed uncomfortably as she let herself plop back into the wooden armchair. The arms of the chair were cooler than her hot arms. She rested her arms along the chair arms, the letter waved negligently up and down in one hand. “How should I know, mother?”

  “Well, darling, can’t you read it? Where does he say he’s staying.” “He doesn’t say where, mother.” “Well, where is the letter postmarked?” “I think it’s . . . I think it’s Italy. I suppose he’s still in Venice.” The name did nothing to her, recalled nothing but some tiresome prints in the volume of the Schools of Painting that she didn’t care for, and a general feeling of a crowd, the sort of thing she had avoided priggishly, even in real childhood, shoot-the-shoots, carnival of Venice. Say “Venice” and you say “Carnival” and are pushed into an open rowboat to bump and shriek, shooting shoots, with other preadolescents. That hadn’t lately happened . . . Venice did nothing to her.

  Not so with Eugenia who sighed, “Venice.” Eugenia went on sewing. She dropped her sewing. “Are the other letters for your father?” “I think so.” Her mother counted out the letters, “There’re none for Bertrand.” “But Minnie’s had hers.” “Here’s one here—girls at Bryn Mawr.” Someone from a long distance said “Girls at Bryn Maw.” It was Eugenia speaking.

  “I think this is for you too. It looks like one of your girls at Bryn Mawr.” Her took the envelope with its stereotyped, carefully “cultivated” writing going off at the edges. Nellie Thorpe. “It’s from Nellie Thorpe.”