The water, I said, must have been quite cold.
That is not the point, said the logical doomed dear. He is subnormal, you see. And, she continued (in that carefully phrased way of hers that was beginning to tell on my health), I have a very definite feeling our Louise is in love with that moron.
Feeling. We feel Dolly is not doing as well, etc. (from an old school report).
The Humberts walked on, sandalled and robed.
Do you know, Hum: I have one most ambitious dream, pronounced Lady Hum, lowering her head shy of that dream and communing with the tawny ground. I would love to get hold of a real trained servant maid like that German girl the Talbots spoke of; and have her live in the house.
No room, I said.
Come, she said with her quizzical smile, surely, chéri, you underestimate the possibilities of the Humbert home. We would put her in Los room. I intended to make a guestroom of that hole anyway. Its the coldest and meanest in the whole house.
What are you talking about? I asked, the skin of my cheekbones tensing up (this I take the trouble to note only because my daughters skin did the same when she felt that way: disbelief, disgust, irritation).
Are you bothered by Romantic Associations? queried my wife in allusion to her first surrender.
Hell no, said I. I just wonder where will you put your daughter when you get your guest or your maid.
Ah, said Mrs. Humbert, dreaming, smiling, drawing out the Ah simultaneously with the raise of one eyebrow and a soft exhalation of breath. Little Lo, Im afraid, does not enter the picture at all, at all. Little Lo goes straight from camp to a good boarding school with strict discipline and some sound religious training. And then Beardsley College. I have it all mapped out, you need not worry.
She went on to say that she, Mrs. Humbert, would have to overcome her habitual sloth and write to Miss Phalens sister who taught at St. Algebra. The dazzling lake emerged. I said I had forgotten my sunglasses in the car and would catch up with her.
I had always thought that wringing ones hands was a fictional gesture the obscure outcome, perhaps, of some medieval ritual; but as I took to the woods, for a spell of despair and desperate meditation, this was the gesture (look, Lord, at these chains!) that would have come nearest to the mute expression of my mood.
No room, I said.
Come, she said with her quizzical smile, surely, chéri, you underestimate the possibilities of the Humbert home. We would put her in Los room. I intended to make a guestroom of that hole anyway. Its the coldest and meanest in the whole house.
What are you talking about? I asked, the skin of my cheekbones tensing up (this I take the trouble to note only because my daughters skin did the same when she felt that way: disbelief, disgust, irritation).
Are you bothered by Romantic Associations? queried my wife in allusion to her first surrender.
Hell no, said I. I just wonder where will you put your daughter when you get your guest or your maid.
Ah, said Mrs. Humbert, dreaming, smiling, drawing out the Ah simultaneously with the raise of one eyebrow and a soft exhalation of breath. Little Lo, Im afraid, does not enter the picture at all, at all. Little Lo goes straight from camp to a good boarding school with strict discipline and some sound religious training. And then Beardsley College. I have it all mapped out, you need not worry.
She went on to say that she, Mrs. Humbert, would have to overcome her habitual sloth and write to Miss Phalens sister who taught at St. Algebra. The dazzling lake emerged. I said I had forgotten my sunglasses in the car and would catch up with her.
I had always thought that wringing ones hands was a fictional gesture the obscure outcome, perhaps, of some medieval ritual; but as I took to the woods, for a spell of despair and desperate meditation, this was the gesture (look, Lord, at these chains!) that would have come nearest to the mute expression of my mood.
Had Charlotte been Valeria, I would have known how to handle the situation; and handle is the word I want. In the good old days, by merely twisting fat Valechkas brittle wrist (the one she had fallen upon from a bicycle) I could make her change her mind instantly; but anything of the sort in regard to Charlotte was unthinkable. Bland American Charlotte frightened me. My lighthearted dream of controlling her through her passion for me was all wrong. I dared not do anything to spoil the image of me she had set up to adore. I had toadied to her when she was the awesome duenna of my darling, and a grovelling something still persisted in my attitude toward her. The only ace I held was her ignorance of my monstrous love for her Lo. She had been annoyed by Los liking me; but my feelings she could not divine. To Valeria I might have said: Look here, you fat fool, cest moi qui décide[108] what is good for Dolores Humbert. To Charlotte, I could not even say (with ingratiating calm): Excuse me, my dear, I disagree. Let us give the child one more chance. Let me be her private tutor for a year or so. You once told me yourself In fact, I could not say anything at all to Charlotte about the child without giving myself away. Oh, you cannot imagine (as I had never imagined) what these women of principle are! Charlotte, who did not notice the falsity of all the everyday conventions and rules of behaviour, and foods, and books, and people she doted upon, would distinguish at once a false intonation in anything I might say with a view to keeping Lo near me. She was like a musician who may be an odious vulgarian in ordinary life, devoid of tact and taste; but who will hear a false note in music with diabolical accuracy of judgment. To break Charlottes will, I would have to break her heart. If I broke her heart, her image of me would break too. If I said: Either I have my way with Lolita, and you help me to keep the matter quiet, or we part at once, she would have turned as pale as a woman of clouded glass and slowly replied: All right, whatever you add or retract, this is the end. And the end it would be.