THE SEARCHLIGHT

   The mansion of the eighteenth century Earl had been changed in the twentieth century into a Club. And it was pleasant, after dining in the great room with the pillars and the chandeliers under a glare of light to go out on to the balcony overlooking the Park. The trees were in full leaf, and had there been a moon, one could have seen the pink and cream coloured cockades on the chestnut trees. But it was a moonless night; very warm, after a fine summer's day.
   Mr. and Mrs. Ivimey's party were drinking coffee and smoking on the balcony. As if to relieve them from the need of talking, to entertain them without any effort on their part, rods of light wheeled across the sky. It was peace then; the air force was practising; searching for enemy aircraft in the sky. After pausing to prod some suspected spot, the light wheeled, like the wings of a windmill, or again like the antennae of some prodigious insect and revealed here a cadaverous stone front; here a chestnut tree with all its blossoms riding; and then suddenly the light struck straight at the balcony, and for a second a bright disc shone-perhaps it was a mirror in a ladies' hand-bag.
   "Look!" Mrs. Ivimey exclaimed.
   The light passed. They were in darkness again
   "You'll never guess what THAT made me see! she added. Naturally, they guessed.
   "No, no, no," she protested. Nobody could guess; only she knew; only she could know, because she was the great-grand-daughter of the man himself. He had told her the story. What story? If they liked, she would try to tell it. There was still time before the play.
   "But where do I begin?" she pondered. "In the year 1820? . . . It must have been about then that my greatgrandfather was a boy. I'm not young myself"-no, but she was very well set up and handsome-"and he was a very old man when I was a child-when he told me the story. A very handsome old man, with a shock of white hair, and blue eyes. He must have been a beautiful boy. But queer. . . . That was only natural," she explained, "seeing how they lived. The name was Comber. They'd come down in the world. They'd been gentlefolk; they'd owned land up in Yorkshire. But when he was a boy only the tower was left. The house was nothing but a little farmhouse, standing in the middle of fields. We saw it ten years ago and went over it. We had to leave the car and walk across the fields. There isn't any road to the house. It stands all alone, the grass grows right up to the gate . . . there were chickens pecking about, running in and out of the rooms. All gone to rack and ruin. I remember a stone fell from the tower suddenly." She paused. "There they lived," she went on, "the old man, the woman and the boy. She wasn't his wife, or the boy's mother. She was just a farm hand, a girl the old man had taken to live with him when his wife died. Another reason perhaps why nobody visited them-why the whole place was gone to rack and ruin. But I remember a coat of arms over the door; and books, old books, gone mouldy. He taught himself all he knew from books. He read and read, he told me, old books, books with maps hanging out from the pages. He dragged them up to the top of the tower-the rope's still there and the broken steps. There's a chair still in the window with the bottom fallen out; and the window swinging open, and the panes broken, and a view for miles and miles across the moors."
   She paused as if she were up in the tower looking from the window that swung open.
   "But we couldn't," she said, "find the telescope." In the dining-room behind them the clatter of plates grew louder. But Mrs. Ivimey, on the balcony, seemed puzzled, because she could not find the telescope.
   "Why a telescope?" someone asked her.
   "Why? Because if there hadn't been a telescope," she laughed, "I shouldn't be sitting here now."
   And certainly she was sitting there now, a well set-up, middle-aged woman, with something blue over her shoulders.
   "It must have been there," she resumed, "because, he told me, every night when the old people had gone to bed he sat at the window, looking through the telescope at the stars. Jupiter, Aldebaran, Cassiopeia." She waved her hand at the stars that were beginning to show over the trees. It was growing draker. And the searchlight seemed brighter, sweeping across the sky, pausing here and there to stare at the stars.
   "There they were," she went on, "the stars. And he asked himself, my great-grandfather-that boy: 'What are they? Why are they? And who am I?' as one does, sitting alone, with no one to talk to, looking at the stars."
   She was silent. They all looked at the stars that were coming out in the darkness over the trees. The stars seemed very permanent, very unchanging. The roar of London sank away. A hundred years seemed nothing. They felt that the boy was looking at the stars with them. They seemed to be with him, in the tower, looking out over the moors at the stars.
   Then a voice behind them said:
   "Right you are. Friday."
   They all turned, shifted, felt dropped down on to the balcony again.
   "Ah, but there was nobody to say that to him," she murmured. The couple rose and walked away.
   "HE was alone," she resumed. "It was a fine summer's day. A June day. One of those perfect summer days when everything seems to stand still in the heat. There were the chickens pecking in the farm-yard; the old horse stamping in the stable; the old man dozing over his glass. The woman scouring pails in the scullery. Perhaps a stone fell from the tower. It seemed as if the day would never end. And he had no one to talk to-nothing whatever to do. The whole world stretched before him. The moor rising and falling; the sky meeting the moor; green and blue, green and blue, for ever and ever."
   In the half light, they could see that Mrs. Ivimey was leaning over the balcony, with her chin propped on her hands, as if she were looking out over the moors from the top of a tower.
   "Nothing but moor and sky, moor and sky, for ever and ever," she murmured.
   Then she made a movement, as if she swung something into position.
   "But what did the earth look like through the telescope?" she asked.
   She made another quick little movement with her fingers as if she were twirling something.
   "He focussed it," she said. "He focussed it upon the earth. He focussed it upon a dark mass of wood upon the horizon. He focussed it so that he could see . . . each tree . . . each tree separate . . . and the birds . . . rising and falling . . . and a stem of smoke . . . there . . . in the midst of the trees. . . . And then . . . lower . . . lower . . . (she lowered her eyes) . . . there was a house . . . a house among the trees . . . a farm-house . . . every brick showed . . . and the tubs on either side of the door . . . with flowers in them blue, pink, hydrangeas, perhaps. . . ." She paused . . . "And then a girl came out of the house . . . wearing something blue upon her head . . . and stood there . . . feeding birds . . . pigeons . . . they came fluttering round her. . . . And then . . . look. . . . A man. . . . A man! He came round the corner. He seized her in his arms! They kissed . . . they kissed."
   Mrs. Ivimey opened her arms and closed them as if she were kissing someone.
   "It was the first time he had seen a man kiss a woman-in his telescope-miles and miles away across the moors!"
   She thrust something from her-the telescope presumably. She sat upright.
   "So he ran down the stairs. He ran through the fields. He ran down lanes, out upon the high road, through woods. He ran for miles and miles, and just when the stars were showing above the trees he reached the house . . . covered with dust, streaming with sweat . . . ."
   She stopped, as if she saw him.
   "And then, and then . . . what did he do then? What did he say? And the girl . . ." they pressed her.
   A shaft of light fell upon Mrs. Ivimey as if someone had focussed the lens of a telescope upon her. (It was the air force, looking for enemy air craft.) She had risen. She had something blue on her head. She had raised her hand, as if she stood in a doorway, amazed.
   "Oh the girl. . . . She was my-" she hesitated, as if she were about to say "myself." But she remembered; and corrected herself. "She was my great-grand-mother," she said.
   She turned to look for her cloak. It was on a chair behind her.
   "But tell us-what about the other man, the man who came round the corner?" they asked.
   "That man? Oh, that man," Mrs. Ivimey murmured, stooping to fumble with her cloak (the searchlight had left the balcony), "he I suppose, vanished."
   "The light," she added, gathering her things about her, "only falls here and there."
   The searchlight had passed on. It was now focussed on the plain expanse of Buckingham Palace. And it was time they went on to the play.
   1944

THE LEGACY

   "For Sissy Miller." Gilbert Clandon, taking up the pearl brooch that lay among a litter of rings and brooches on a little table in his wife's drawing-room, read the inscription: "For Sissy Miller, with my love."
   It was like Angela to have remembered even Sissy Miller, her secretary. Yet how strange it was, Gilbert Clandon thought once more, that she had left everything in such order-a little gift of some sort for every one of her friends. It was as if she had foreseen her death. Yet she had been in perfect health when she left the house that morning, six weeks ago; when she stepped off the kerb in Piccadilly and the car had killed her.
   He was waiting for Sissy Miller. He had asked her to come; he owed her, he felt, after all the years she had been with them, this token of consideration. Yes, he went on, as he sat there waiting, it was strange that Angela had left everything in such order. Every friend had been left some little token of her affection. Every ring, every necklace, every little Chinese box-she had a passion for little boxes-had a name on it. And each had some memory for him. This he had given her; this
   –the enamel dolphin with the ruby eyes-she had pounced upon one day in a back street in Venice. He could remember her little cry of delight. To him, of course, she had left nothing in particular, unless it were her diary. Fifteen little volumes, bound in green leather, stood behind him on her writing table. Ever since they were married, she had kept a diary. Some of their very few-he could not call them quarrels, say tiffs-had been about that diary. When he came in and found her writing, she always shut it or put her hand over it. "No, no, no," he could hear her say, "After I'm dead-perhaps." So she had left it him, as her legacy. It was the only thing they had not shared when she was alive. But he had always taken it for granted that she would outlive him. If only she had stopped one moment, and had thought what she was doing, she would be alive now. But she had stepped straight off the kerb, the driver of the car had said at the inquest. She had given him no chance to pull up. . . . Here the sound of voices in the hall interrupted him.
   "Miss Miller, Sir," said the maid.
   She came in. He had never seen her alone in his life, nor, of course, in tears. She was terribly distressed, and no wonder. Angela had been much more to her than an employer. She had been a friend. To himself, he thought, as he pushed a chair for her and asked her to sit down, she was scarcely distinguishable from any other woman of her kind. There were thousands of Sissy Millers-drab little women in black carrying attache cases. But Angela, with her genius for sympathy, had discovered all sorts of qualities in Sissy Miller. She was the soul of discretion; so silent; so trustworthy, one could tell her anything, and so on.
   Miss Miller could not speak at first. She sat there dabbing her eyes with her pocket handkerchief. Then she made an effort.
   "Pardon me, Mr. Clandon," she said.
   He murmured. Of course he understood. It was only natural. He could guess what his wife had meant to her.
   "I've been so happy here," she said, looking round. Her eyes rested on the writing table behind him. It was here they had worked-she and Angela. For Angela had her share of the duties that fall to the lot of a prominent politician's wife. She had been the greatest help to him in his career. He had often seen her and Sissy sitting at that table-Sissy at the typewriter, taking down letters from her dictation. No doubt Miss Miller was thinking of that, too. Now all he had to do was to give her the brooch his wife had left her. A rather incongruous gift it seemed. It might have been better to have left her a sum of money, or even the typewriter. But there it was-"For Sissy Miller, with my love." And, taking the brooch, he gave it her with the little speech that he had prepared. He knew, he said, that she would value it. His wife had often worn it. . . . And she replied, as she took it almost as if she too had prepared a speech, that it would always be a treasured possession. . . . She had, he supposed, other clothes upon which a pearl brooch would not look quite so incongruous. She was wearing the little black coat and skirt that seemed the uniform of her profession. Then he remembered-she was in mourning, of course. She, too, had had her tragedy-a brother, to whom she was devoted, had died only a week or two before Angela. In some accident was it? He could not remember-only Angela telling him. Angela, with her genius for sympathy, had been terribly upset. Meanwhile Sissy Miller had risen. She was putting on her gloves. Evidently she felt that she ought not to intrude. But he could not let her go without saying something about her future. What were her plans? Was there any way in which he could help her?
   She was gazing at the table, where she had sat at her typewriter, where the diary lay. And, lost in her memories of Angela, she did not at once answer his suggestion that he should help her. She seemed for a moment not to understand. So he repeated:
   "What are your plans, Miss Miller?"
   "My plans? Oh, that's all right, Mr. Clandon," she exclaimed. "Please don't bother yourself about me."
   He took her to mean that she was in no need of financial assistance. It would be better, he realized, to make any suggestion of that kind in a letter. All he could do now was to say as he pressed her hand, "Remember, Miss Miller, if there's any way in which I can help you, it will be a pleasure. . . ." Then he opened the door. For a moment, on the threshold, as if a sudden thought had struck her, she stopped.
   "Mr. Clandon," she said, looking straight at him for the first time, and for the first time he was struck by the expression, sympathetic yet searching, in her eyes. "If at any time," she continued, "there's anything I can do to help you, remember, I shall feel it, for your wife's sake, a pleasure . . ."
   With that she was gone. Her words and the look that went with them were unexpected. It was almost as if she believed, or hoped, that he would need her. A curious, perhaps a fantastic idea occurred to him as he returned to his chair. Could it be, that during all those years when he had scarcely noticed her, she, as the novelists say, had entertained a passion for him? He caught his own reflection in the glass as he passed. He was over fifty; but he could not help admitting that he was still, as the looking-glass showed him, a very distinguished-looking man.
   "Poor Sissy Miller!" he said, half laughing. How he would have liked to share that joke with his wife! He turned instinctively to her diary. "Gilbert," he read, opening it at random, "looked so wonderful. . . ." It was as if she had answered his question. Of course, she seemed to say, you're very attractive to women. Of course Sissy Miller felt that too. He read on. "How proud I am to be his wife!" And he had always been very proud to be her husband. How often, when they dined out somewhere, he had looked at her across the table and said to himself, She is the loveliest woman here! He read on. That first year he had been standing for Parliament. They had toured his constituency. "When Gilbert sat down the applause was terrific. The whole audience rose and sang: 'For he's a jolly good fellow.' I was quite overcome." He remembered that, too. She had been sitting on the platform beside him. He could still see the glance she cast at him, and how she had tears in her eyes. And then? He turned the pages. They had gone to Venice. He recalled that happy holiday after the election. "We had ices at Florians." He smiled-she was still such a child; she loved ices. "Gilbert gave me a most interesting account of the history of Venice. He told me that the Doges. . ." she had written it all out in her schoolgirl hand. One of the delights of travelling with Angela had been that she was so eager to learn. She was so terribly ignorant, she used to say, as if that were not one of her charms. And then-he opened the next volume-they had come back to London. "I was so anxious to make a good impression. I wore my wedding dress." He could see her now sitting next old Sir Edward; and making a conquest of that formidable old man, his chief. He read on rapidly, filling in scene after scene from her scrappy fragments. "Dined at the House of Commons. . . . To an evening party at the Lovegroves. Did I realize my responsibility, Lady L. asked me, as Gilbert's wife?" Then, as the years passed-he took another volume from the writing table-he had become more and more absorbed in his work. And she, of course, was more often alone. . . . It had been a great grief to her, apparently, that they had had no children. "How I wish," one entry read, "that Gilbert had a son!" Oddly enough he had never much regretted that himself. Life had been so full, so rich as it was. That year he had been given a minor post in the government. A minor post only, but her comment was: "I am quite certain now that he will be Prime Minister!" Well, if things had gone differently, it might have been so. He paused here to speculate upon what might have been. Politics was a gamble, he reflected; but the game wasn't over yet. Not at fifty. He cast his eyes rapidly over more pages, full of the little trifles, the insignificant, happy, daily trifles that had made up her life.
   He took up another volume and opened it at random. "What a coward I am! I let the chance slip again. But it seemed selfish to bother him with my own affairs, when he has so much to think about. And we so seldom have an evening alone." What was the meaning of that? Oh, here was the explanation-it referred to her work in the East End. "I plucked up courage and talked to Gilbert at last. He was so kind, so good. He made no objection." He remembered that conversation. She had told him that she felt so idle, so useless. She wished to have some work of her own. She wanted to do something-she had blushed so prettily, he remembered, as she said it, sitting in that very chair-to help others. He had bantered her a little. Hadn't she enough to do looking after him, after her home? Still, if it amused her, of course he had no objection. What was it? Some district? Some committee? Only she must promise not to make herself ill. So it seemed that every Wednesday she went to Whitechapel. He remembered how he hated the clothes she wore on those occasions. But she had taken it very seriously, it seemed. The diary was full of references like this: "Saw Mrs. Jones. . . She has ten children. . . . Husband lost his arm in an accident. . . . Did my best to find a job for Lily." He skipped on. His own name occurred less frequently. His interest slackened. Some of the entries conveyed nothing to him. For example: "Had a heated argument about socialism with B. M." Who was B. M.? He could not fill in the initials; some woman, he supposed, that she had met on one of her committees. "B. M. made a violent attack upon the upper classes. . . . I walked back after the meeting with B. M. and tried to convince him. But he is so narrow-minded." So B. M. was a man-no doubt one of those "intellectuals," as they call themselves, who are so violent, as Angela said, and so narrow-minded. She had invited him to come and see her apparently. "B. M. came to dinner. He shook hands with Minnie!" That note of exclamation gave another twist to his mental picture. B. M., it seemed, wasn't used to parlour-maids; he had shaken hands with Minnie. Presumably he was one of those tame working men who air their views in ladies' drawing-rooms. Gilbert knew the type, and had no liking for this particular specimen, whoever B. M. might be. Here he was again. "Went with B. M. to the Tower of London. . . . He said revolution is bound to come . . . He said we live in a Fool's Paradise." That was just the kind of thing B. M. would say-Gilbert could hear him. He could also see him quite distinctly-a stubby little man, with a rough beard, red tie, dressed as they always did in tweeds, who had never done an honest day's work in his life. Surely Angela had the sense to see through him? He read on. "B. M. said some very disagreeable things about-" The name was carefully scratched out. "I told him I would not listen to any more abuse of-" Again the name was obliterated. Could it have been his own name? Was that why Angela covered the page so quickly when he came in? The thought added to his growing dislike of B.M. He had had the impertinence to discuss him in this very room. Why had Angela never told him? It was very unlike her to conceal anything; she had been the soul of candour. He turned the pages, picking out every reference to B. M. "B. M. told me the story of his childhood. His mother went out charring . . . When I think of it, I can hardly bear to go on living in such luxury. . . . Three guineas for one hat!" If only she had discussed the matter with him, instead of puzzling her poor little head about questions that were much too difficult for her to understand! He had lent her books. KARL MARX, THE COMING REVOLUTION. The initials B.M., B. M., B. M., recurred repeatedly. But why never the full name? There was an informality, an intimacy in the use of initials that was very unlike Angela. Had she called him B. M. to his face? He read on. "B. M. came unexpectedly after dinner. Luckily, I was alone." That was only a year ago. "Luckily"-why luckily?-"I was alone." Where had he been that night? He checked the date in his engagement book. It had been the night of the Mansion House dinner. And B. M. and Angela had spent the evening alone! He tried to recall that evening. Was she waiting up for him when he came back? Had the room looked just as usual? Were there glasses on the table? Were the chairs drawn close together? He could remember nothing-nothing whatever, nothing except his own speech at the Mansion House dinner. It became more and more inexplicable to him-the whole situation; his wife receiving an unknown man alone. Perhaps the next volume would explain. Hastily he reached for the last of the diaries-the one she had left unfinished when she died. There, on the very first page, was that cursed fellow again. "Dined alone with B.M. . . . He became very agitated. He said it was time we understood each other. . . . I tried to make him listen. But he would not. He threatened that if I did not . . ." the rest of the page was scored over. She had written "Egypt. Egypt. Egypt," over the whole page. He could not make out a single word; but there could be only one interpretation: the scoundrel had asked her to become his mistress. Alone in his room! The blood rushed to Gilbert Clandon's face. He turned the pages rapidly. What had been her answer? Initials had ceased. It was simply "he" now. "He came again. I told him I could not come to any decision. . . . I implored him to leave me." He had forced himself upon her in this very house. But why hadn't she told him? How could she have hesitated for an instant? Then: "I wrote him a letter." Then pages were left blank. Then there was this: "No answer to my letter." Then more blank pages; and then this: "He has done what he threatened." After that-what came after that? He turned page after page. All were blank. But there, on the very day before her death, was this entry: "Have I the courage to do it too?" That was the end.
   Gilbert Clandon let the book slide to the floor. He could see her in front of him. She was standing on the kerb in Piccadilly. Her eyes stared; her fists were clenched. Here came the car. . . .
   He could not bear it. He must know the truth. He strode to the telephone.
   "Miss Miller!" There was silence. Then he heard someone moving in the room.
   "Sissy Miller speaking"-her voice at last answered him.
   "Who," he thundered, "is B. M.?"
   He could hear the cheap clock ticking on her mantelpiece; then a long drawn sigh. Then at last she said:
   "He was my brother."
   He WAS her brother; her brother who had killed himself. "Is there," he heard Sissy Miller asking, "anything that I can explain?"
   "Nothing!" he cried. "Nothing!"
   He had received his legacy. She had told him the truth. She had stepped off the kerb to rejoin her lover. She had stepped off the kerb to escape from him.
   1944

TOGETHER AND APART

   Mrs. Dalloway introduced them, saying you will like him. The conversation began some minutes before anything was said, for both Mr. Serle and Miss Arming looked at the sky and in both of their minds the sky went on pouring its meaning though very differently, until the presence of Mr. Serle by her side became so distinct to Miss Anning that she could not see the sky, simply, itself, any more, but the sky shored up by the tall body, dark eyes, grey hair, clasped hands, the stern melancholy (but she had been told "falsely melancholy") face of Roderick Serle, and, knowing how foolish it was, she yet felt impelled to say:
   "What a beautiful night!"
   Foolish! Idiotically foolish! But if one mayn't be foolish at the age of forty in the presence of the sky, which makes the wisest imbecile-mere wisps of straw-she and Mr. Serle atoms, motes, standing there at Mrs. Dalloway's window, and their lives, seen by moonlight, as long as an insect's and no more important.
   "Well!" said Miss Anning, patting the sofa cushion emphatically. And down he sat beside her. Was he "falsely melancholy," as they said? Prompted by the sky, which seemed to make it all a little futile-what they said, what they did-she said something perfectly commonplace again:
   "There was a Miss Serle who lived at Canterbury when I was a girl there."
   With the sky in his mind, all the tombs of his ancestors immediately appeared to Mr. Serle in a blue romantic light, and his eyes expanding and darkening, he said: "Yes.
   "We are originally a Norman family, who came over with the Conqueror. That is a Richard Serle buried in the Cathedral. He was a knight of the garter."
   Miss Arming felt that she had struck accidentally the true man, upon whom the false man was built. Under the influence of the moon (the moon which symbolized man to her, she could see it through a chink of the curtain, and she took dips of the moon) she was capable of saying almost anything and she settled in to disinter the true man who was buried under the false, saying to herself: "On, Stanley, on"-which was a watchword of hers, a secret spur, or scourge such as middle-aged people often make to flagellate some inveterate vice, hers being a deplorable timidity, or rather indolence, for it was not so much that she lacked courage, but lacked energy, especially in talking to men, who frightened her rather, and so often her talks petered out into dull commonplaces, and she had very few men friends-very few intimate friends at all, she thought, but after all, did she want them? No. She had Sarah, Arthur, the cottage, the chow and, of course THAT, she thought, dipping herself, sousing herself, even as she sat on the sofa beside Mr. Serle, in THAT, in the sense she had coming home of something collected there, a cluster of miracles, which she could not believe other people had (since it was she only who had Arthur, Sarah, the cottage, and the chow), but she soused herself again in the deep satisfactory possession, feeling that what with this and the moon (music that was, the moon), she could afford to leave this man and that pride of his in the Serles buried. No! That was the danger-she must not sink into torpidity-not at her age. "On, Stanley, on," she said to herself, and asked him:
   "Do you know Canterbury yourself?"
   Did he know Canterbury! Mr. Serle smiled, thinking how absurd a question it was-how little she knew, this nice quiet woman who played some instrument and seemed intelligent and had good eyes, and was wearing a very nice old necklace-knew what it meant. To be asked if he knew Canterbury. When the best years of his life, all his memories, things he had never been able to tell anybody, but had tried to write-ah, had tried to write (and he sighed) all had centred in Canterbury; it made him laugh.
   His sigh and then his laugh, his melancholy and his humour, made people like him, and he knew it, and yet being liked had not made up for the disappointment, and if he sponged on the liking people had for him (paying long calls on sympathetic ladies, long, long calls), it was half bitterly, for he had never done a tenth part of what he could have done, and had dreamed of doing, as a boy in Canterbury. With a stranger he felt a renewal of hope because they could not say that he had not done what he had promised, and yielding to his charm would give him a fresh start-at fifty! She had touched the spring. Fields and flowers and grey buildings dripped down into his mind, formed silver drops on the gaunt, dark walls of his mind and dripped down. With such an image his poems often began. He felt the desire to make images now, sitting by this quiet woman.
   "Yes, I know Canterbury," he said reminiscently, sentimentally, inviting, Miss Anning felt, discreet questions, and that was what made him interesting to so many people, and it was this extraordinary facility and responsiveness to talk on his part that had been his undoing, so he thought often, taking his studs out and putting his keys and small change on the dressing-table after one of these parties (and he went out sometimes almost every night in the season), and, going down to breakfast, becoming quite different, grumpy, unpleasant at breakfast to his wife, who was an invalid, and never went out, but had old friends to see her sometimes, women friends for the most part, interested in Indian philosophy and different cures and different doctors, which Roderick Serle snubbed off by some caustic remark too clever for her to meet, except by gentle expostulations and a tear or two-he had failed, he often thought, because he could not cut himself off utterly from society and the company of women, which was so necessary to him, and write. He had involved himself too deep in life-and here he would cross his knees (all his movements were a little unconventional and distinguished) and not blame himself, but put the blame off upon the richness of his nature, which he compared favourably with Wordsworth's, for example, and, since he had given so much to people, he felt, resting his head on his hands, they in their turn should help him, and this was the prelude, tremulous, fascinating, exciting, to talk; and images bubbled up in his mind.
   "She's like a fruit tree-like a flowering cherry tree," he said, looking at a youngish woman with fine white hair. It was a nice sort of image, Ruth Anning thought-rather nice, yet she did not feel sure that she liked this distinguished, melancholy man with his gestures; and it's odd, she thought, how one's feelings are influenced. She did not like HIM, though she rather liked that comparison of his of a woman to a cherry tree. Fibres of her were floated capriciously this way and that, like the tentacles of a sea anemone, now thrilled, now snubbed, and her brain, miles away, cool and distant, up in the air, received messages which it would sum up in time so that, when people talked about Roderick Serle (and he was a bit of a figure) she would say unhesitatingly: "I like him," or "I don't like him," and her opinion would be made up for ever. An odd thought; a solemn thought; throwing a green light on what human fellowship consisted of.
   "It's odd that you should know Canterbury," said Mr. Serle. "It's always a shock," he went on (the white-haired lady having passed), "when one meets someone" (they had never met before), "by chance, as it were, who touches the fringe of what has meant a great deal to oneself, touches accidentally, for I suppose Canterbury was nothing but a nice old town to you. So you stayed there one summer with an aunt?" (That was all Ruth Anning was going to tell him about her visit to Canterbury.) "And you saw the sights and went away and never thought of it again."
   Let him think so; not liking him, she wanted him to run away with an absurd idea of her. For really, her three months in Canterbury had been amazing. She remembered to the last detail, though it was merely a chance visit, going to see Miss Charlotte Serle, an acquaintance of her aunt's. Even now she could repeat Miss Serle's very words about the thunder. "Whenever I wake, or hear thunder in the night, I think 'Someone has been killed'." And she could see the hard, hairy, diamond-patterned carpet, and the twinkling, suffused, brown eyes of the elderly lady, holding the teacup out unfilled, while she said that about the thunder. And always she saw Canterbury, all thundercloud and livid apple blossom, and the long grey backs of the buildings.
   The thunder roused her from her plethoric middle-aged swoon of indifference; "On, Stanley, on," she said to herself; that is, this man shall not glide away from me, like everybody else, on this false assumption; I will tell him the truth.
   "I loved Canterbury," she said.
   He kindled instantly. It was his gift, his fault, his destiny.
   "Loved it," he repeated. "I can see that you did."
   Her tentacles sent back the message that Roderick Serle was nice.
   Their eyes met; collided rather, for each felt that behind the eyes the secluded being, who sits in darkness while his shallow agile companion does all the tumbling and beckoning, and keeps the show going, suddenly stood erect; flung off his cloak; confronted the other. It was alarming; it was terrific. They were elderly and burnished into a glowing smoothness, so that Roderick Serle would go, perhaps to a dozen parties in a season, and feel nothing out of the common, or only sentimental regrets, and the desire for pretty images-like this of the flowering cherry tree-and all the time there stagnated in him unstirred a sort of superiority to his company, a sense of untapped resources, which sent him back home dissatisfied with life, with himself, yawning, empty, capricious. But now, quite suddenly, like a white bolt in a mist (but this image forged itself with the inevitability of lightning and loomed up), there it had happened; the old ecstasy of life; its invincible assault; for it was unpleasant, at the same time that it rejoiced and rejuvenated and filled the veins and nerves with threads of ice and fire; it was terrifying. "Canterbury twenty years ago," said Miss Anning, as one lays a shade over an intense light, or covers some burning peach with a green leaf, for it is too strong, too ripe, too full.
   Sometimes she wished she had married. Sometimes the cool peace of middle life, with its automatic devices for shielding mind and body from bruises, seemed to her, compared with the thunder and the livid apple-blossom of Canterbury, base. She could imagine something different, more like lightning, more intense. She could imagine some physical sensation. She could imagine-
   And, strangely enough, for she had never seen him before, her senses, those tentacles which were thrilled and snubbed, now sent no more messages, now lay quiescent, as if she and Mr. Serle knew each other so perfectly, were, in fact, so closely united that they had only to float side by side down this stream.
   Of all things, nothing is so strange as human intercourse, she thought, because of its changes, its extraordinary irrationality, her dislike being now nothing short of the most intense and rapturous love, but directly the word "love" occurred to her, she rejected it, thinking again how obscure the mind was, with its very few words for all these astonishing perceptions, these alternations of pain and pleasure. For how did one name this. That is what she felt now, the withdrawal of human affection, Serle's disappearance, and the instant need they were both under to cover up what was so desolating and degrading to human nature that everyone tried to bury it decently from sight-this withdrawal, this violation of trust, and, seeking some decent acknowledged and accepted burial form, she said:
   "Of course, whatever they may do, they can't spoil Canterbury."
   He smiled; he accepted it; he crossed his knees the other way about. She did her part; he his. So things came to an end. And over them both came instantly that paralysing blankness of feeling, when nothing bursts from the mind, when its walls appear like slate; when vacancy almost hurts, and the eyes petrified and fixed see the same spot-a pattern, a coal scuttle-with an exactness which is terrifying, since no emotion, no idea, no impression of any kind comes to change it, to modify it, to embellish it, since the fountains of feeling seem sealed and as the mind turns rigid, so does the body; stark, statuesque, so that neither Mr. Serle nor Miss Anning could move or speak, and they felt as if an enchanter had freed them, and spring flushed every vein with streams of life, when Mira Cartwright, tapping Mr. Serle archly on the shoulder, said:
   "I saw you at the Meistersinger, and you cut me. Villain," said Miss Cartwright, "you don't deserve that I should ever speak to you again."
   And they could separate.
   1944

A SUMMING UP

   Since it had grown hot and crowded indoors, since there could be no danger on a night like this of damp, since the Chinese lanterns seemed hung red and green fruit in the depths of an enchanted forest, Mr. Bertram Pritchard led Mrs. Latham into the garden.
   The open air and the sense of being out of doors bewildered Sasha Latham, the tall, handsome, rather indolent looking lady, whose majesty of presence was so great that people never credited her with feeling perfectly inadequate and gauche when she had to say something at a party. But so it was; and she was glad that she was with Bertram, who could be trusted, even out of doors, to talk without stopping. Written down what he said would be incredible-not only was each thing he said in itself insignificant, but there was no connection between the different remarks. Indeed, if one had taken a pencil and written down his very words-and one night of his talk would have filled a whole book-no one could doubt, reading them, that the poor man was intellectually deficient. This was far from the case, for Mr. Pritchard was an esteemed civil servant and a Companion of the Bath; but what was even stranger was that he was almost invariably liked. There was a sound in his voice, some accent of emphasis, some lustre in the incongruity of his ideas, some emanation from his round, cubbby brown face and robin redbreast's figure, something immaterial, and unseizable, which existed and flourished and made itself felt independently of his words, indeed, often in opposition to them. Thus Sasha Latham would be thinking while he chattered on about his tour in Devonshire, about inns and landladies, about Eddie and Freddie, about cows and night travelling, about cream and stars, about continental railways and Bradshaw, catching cod, catching cold, influenza, rheumatism and Keats-she was thinking of him in the abstract as a person whose existence was good, creating him as he spoke in the guise that was different from what he said, and was certainly the true Bertram Pritchard, even though one could not prove it. How could one prove that he was a loyal friend and very sympathetic and-but here, as so often happened, talking to Bertram Pritchard, she forgot his existence, and began to think of something else.
   It was the night she thought of, hitching herself together in some way, taking a look up into the sky. It was the country she smelt suddenly, the sombre stillness of fields under the stars, but here, in Mrs. Dalloway's back garden, in Westminster, the beauty, country born and bred as she was, thrilled her because of the contrast presumably; there the smell of hay in the air and behind her the rooms full of people. She walked with Bertram; she walked rather like a stag, with a little give of the ankles, fanning herself, majestic, silent, with all her senses roused, her ears pricked, snuffing the air, as if she had been some wild, but perfectly controlled creature taking its pleasure by night.
   This, she thought, is the greatest of marvels; the supreme achievement of the human race. Where there were osier beds and coracles paddling through a swamp, there is this; and she thought of the dry, thick, well built house stored with valuables, humming with people coming close to each other, going away from each other, exchanging their views, stimulating each other. And Clarissa Dalloway had made it open in the wastes of the night, had laid paving stones over the bog, and, when they came to the end of the garden (it was in fact extremely small), and she and Bertram sat down on deck chairs, she looked at the house veneratingly, enthusiastically, as if a golden shaft ran through her and tears formed on it and fell in profound thanksgiving. Shy though she was and almost incapable when suddenly presented to someone of saying anything, fundamentally humble, she cherished a profound admiration for other people. To be them would be marvellous, but she was condemned to be herself and could only in this silent enthusiastic way, sitting outside in a garden, applaud the society of humanity from which she was excluded. Tags of poetry in praise of them rose to her lips; they were adorable and good, above all courageous, triumphers over night and fens, the survivors, the company of adventurers who, set about with dangers, sail on.
   By some malice of fate she was unable to join, but she could sit and praise while Bertram chattered on, he being among the voyagers, as cabin boy or common seaman-someone who ran up masts, gaily whistling. Thinking thus, the branch of some tree in front of her became soaked and steeped in her admiration for the people of the house; dripped gold; or stood sentinel erect. It was part of the gallant and carousing company a mast from which the flag streamed. There was a barrel of some kind against the wall, and this, too, she endowed.
   Suddenly Bertram, who was restless physically, wanted to explore the grounds, and, jumping on to a heap of bricks he peered over the garden wall. Sasha peered over too. She saw a bucket or perhaps a boot. In a second the illusion vanished. There was London again; the vast inattentive impersonal world; motor omnibuses; affairs; lights before public houses; and yawning policemen.
   Having satisfied his curiosity, and replenished, by a moment's silence, his bubbling fountains of talk, Bertram invited Mr. and Mrs. Somebody to sit with them, pulling up two more chairs. There they sat again, looking at the same house, the same tree, the same barrel; only having looked over the wall and had a glimpse of the bucket, or rather of London going its ways unconcernedly, Sasha could no longer spray over the world that cloud of gold. Bertram talked and the somebodies-for the life of her she could not remember if they were called Wallace or Freeman-answered, and all their words passed through a thin haze of gold and fell into prosaic daylight. She looked at the dry, thick Queen Anne House; she did her best to remember what she had read at school about the Isle of Thorney and men in coracles, oysters, and wild duck and mists, but it seemed to her a logical affair of drains and carpenters, and this party-nothing but people in evening dress.
   Then she asked herself, which view is the true one? She could see the bucket and the house half lit up, half unlit.
   She asked this question of that somebody whom, in her humble way, she had composed out of the wisdom and power of other people. The answer came often by accident-she had known her old spaniel answer by wagging his tail.
   Now the tree, denuded of its gilt and majesty, seemed to supply her with an answer; became a field tree-the only one in a marsh. She had often seen it; seen the red-flushed clouds between its branches, or the moon split up, darting irregular flashes of silver. But what answer? Well that the soul-for she was conscious of a movement in her of some creature beating its way about her and trying to escape which momentarily she called the soul-is by nature unmated, a widow bird; a bird perched aloof on that tree.
   But then Bertram, putting his arm through hers in his familiar way, for he had known her all her life, remarked that they were not doing their duty and must go in.
   At that moment, in some back street or public house, the usual terrible sexless, inarticulate voice rang out; a shriek, a cry. And the widow bird, startled, flew away, describing wider and wider circles until it became (what she called her soul) remote as a crow which has been startled up into the air by a stone thrown at it.
   1944

Chapter 1


"So of course," wrote Betty Flanders, pressing her heels rather deeper in the sand, "there was nothing for it but
to leave."
Slowly welling from the point of her gold nib, pale blue ink dissolved the full stop; for there her pen stuck;
her eyes fixed, and tears slowly filled them. The entire bay quivered; the lighthouse wobbled; and she had the
Jacob's Room 1
illusion that the mast of Mr. Connor's little yacht was bending like a wax candle in the sun. She winked
quickly. Accidents were awful things. She winked again. The mast was straight; the waves were regular; the
lighthouse was upright; but the blot had spread.
"...nothing for it but to leave," she read.
"Well, if Jacob doesn't want to play" (the shadow of Archer, her eldest son, fell across the notepaper and
looked blue on the sand, and she felt chilly−−it was the third of September already), "if Jacob doesn't want to
play"−−what a horrid blot! It must be getting late.
"Where IS that tiresome little boy?" she said. "I don't see him. Run and find him. Tell him to come at once."
"...but mercifully," she scribbled, ignoring the full stop, "everything seems satisfactorily arranged, packed
though we are like herrings in a barrel, and forced to stand the perambulator which the landlady quite
naturally won't allow...."
Such were Betty Flanders's letters to Captain Barfoot−−many−paged, tear− stained. Scarborough is seven
hundred miles from Cornwall: Captain Barfoot is in Scarborough: Seabrook is dead. Tears made all the
dahlias in her garden undulate in red waves and flashed the glass house in her eyes, and spangled the kitchen
with bright knives, and made Mrs. Jarvis, the rector's wife, think at church, while the hymn−tune played and
Mrs. Flanders bent low over her little boys' heads, that marriage is a fortress and widows stray solitary in the
open fields, picking up stones, gleaning a few golden straws, lonely, unprotected, poor creatures. Mrs.
Flanders had been a widow for these two years.
"Ja−−cob! Ja−−cob!" Archer shouted.
"Scarborough," Mrs. Flanders wrote on the envelope, and dashed a bold line beneath; it was her native town;
the hub of the universe. But a stamp? She ferreted in her bag; then held it up mouth downwards; then fumbled
in her lap, all so vigorously that Charles Steele in the Panama hat suspended his paint−brush.
Like the antennae of some irritable insect it positively trembled. Here was that woman moving−−actually
going to get up−−confound her! He struck the canvas a hasty violet−black dab. For the landscape needed it. It
was too pale−−greys flowing into lavenders, and one star or a white gull suspended just so−−too pale as usual.
The critics would say it was too pale, for he was an unknown man exhibiting obscurely, a favourite with his
landladies' children, wearing a cross on his watch chain, and much gratified if his landladies liked his
pictures−−which they often did.
"Ja−−cob! Ja−−cob!" Archer shouted.
Exasperated by the noise, yet loving children, Steele picked nervously at the dark little coils on his palette.
"I saw your brother−−I saw your brother," he said, nodding his head, as Archer lagged past him, trailing his
spade, and scowling at the old gentleman in spectacles.
"Over there−−by the rock," Steele muttered, with his brush between his teeth, squeezing out raw sienna, and
keeping his eyes fixed on Betty Flanders's back.
"Ja−−cob! Ja−−cob!" shouted Archer, lagging on after a second.
The voice had an extraordinary sadness. Pure from all body, pure from all passion, going out into the world,
solitary, unanswered, breaking against rocks−−so it sounded.
Steele frowned; but was pleased by the effect of the black−−it was just THAT note which brought the rest
Jacob's Room 2
together. "Ah, one may learn to paint at fifty! There's Titian..." and so, having found the right tint, up he
looked and saw to his horror a cloud over the bay.
Mrs. Flanders rose, slapped her coat this side and that to get the sand off, and picked up her black parasol.
The rock was one of those tremendously solid brown, or rather black, rocks which emerge from the sand like
something primitive. Rough with crinkled limpet shells and sparsely strewn with locks of dry seaweed, a
small boy has to stretch his legs far apart, and indeed to feel rather heroic, before he gets to the top.
But there, on the very top, is a hollow full of water, with a sandy bottom; with a blob of jelly stuck to the side,
and some mussels. A fish darts across. The fringe of yellow−brown seaweed flutters, and out pushes an
opal−shelled crab−−
"Oh, a huge crab," Jacob murmured−−and begins his journey on weakly legs on the sandy bottom. Now!
Jacob plunged his hand. The crab was cool and very light. But the water was thick with sand, and so,
scrambling down, Jacob was about to jump, holding his bucket in front of him, when he saw, stretched
entirely rigid, side by side, their faces very red, an enormous man and woman.
An enormous man and woman (it was early−closing day) were stretched motionless, with their heads on
pocket−handkerchiefs, side by side, within a few feet of the sea, while two or three gulls gracefully skirted the
incoming waves, and settled near their boots.
The large red faces lying on the bandanna handkerchiefs stared up at Jacob. Jacob stared down at them.
Holding his bucket very carefully, Jacob then jumped deliberately and trotted away very nonchalantly at first,
but faster and faster as the waves came creaming up to him and he had to swerve to avoid them, and the gulls
rose in front of him and floated out and settled again a little farther on. A large black woman was sitting on
the sand. He ran towards her.
"Nanny! Nanny!" he cried, sobbing the words out on the crest of each gasping breath.
The waves came round her. She was a rock. She was covered with the seaweed which pops when it is pressed.
He was lost.
There he stood. His face composed itself. He was about to roar when, lying among the black sticks and straw
under the cliff, he saw a whole skull−−perhaps a cow's skull, a skull, perhaps, with the teeth in it. Sobbing, but
absent−mindedly, he ran farther and farther away until he held the skull in his arms.
"There he is!" cried Mrs. Flanders, coming round the rock and covering the whole space of the beach in a few
seconds. "What has he got hold of? Put it down, Jacob! Drop it this moment! Something horrid, I know. Why
didn't you stay with us? Naughty little boy! Now put it down. Now come along both of you," and she swept
round, holding Archer by one hand and fumbling for Jacob's arm with the other. But he ducked down and
picked up the sheep's jaw, which was loose.
Swinging her bag, clutching her parasol, holding Archer's hand, and telling the story of the gunpowder
explosion in which poor Mr. Curnow had lost his eye, Mrs. Flanders hurried up the steep lane, aware all the
time in the depths of her mind of some buried discomfort.
There on the sand not far from the lovers lay the old sheep's skull without its jaw. Clean, white, wind−swept,
sand−rubbed, a more unpolluted piece of bone existed nowhere on the coast of Cornwall. The sea holly would
grow through the eye−sockets; it would turn to powder, or some golfer, hitting his ball one fine day, would
disperse a little dust−−No, but not in lodgings, thought Mrs. Flanders. It's a great experiment coming so far
with young children. There's no man to help with the perambulator. And Jacob is such a handful; so obstinate
Jacob's Room 3
already.
"Throw it away, dear, do," she said, as they got into the road; but Jacob squirmed away from her; and the
wind rising, she took out her bonnet−pin, looked at the sea, and stuck it in afresh. The wind was rising. The
waves showed that uneasiness, like something alive, restive, expecting the whip, of waves before a storm. The
fishing−boats were leaning to the water's brim. A pale yellow light shot across the purple sea; and shut. The
lighthouse was lit. "Come along," said Betty Flanders. The sun blazed in their faces and gilded the great
blackberries trembling out from the hedge which Archer tried to strip as they passed.
"Don't lag, boys. You've got nothing to change into," said Betty, pulling them along, and looking with uneasy
emotion at the earth displayed so luridly, with sudden sparks of light from greenhouses in gardens, with a sort
of yellow and black mutability, against this blazing sunset, this astonishing agitation and vitality of colour,
which stirred Betty Flanders and made her think of responsibility and danger. She gripped Archer's hand. On
she plodded up the hill.
"What did I ask you to remember?" she said.
"I don't know," said Archer.
"Well, I don't know either," said Betty, humorously and simply, and who shall deny that this blankness of
mind, when combined with profusion, mother wit, old wives' tales, haphazard ways, moments of astonishing
daring, humour, and sentimentality−−who shall deny that in these respects every woman is nicer than any
man?
Well, Betty Flanders, to begin with.
She had her hand upon the garden gate.
"The meat!" she exclaimed, striking the latch down.
She had forgotten the meat.
There was Rebecca at the window.
The bareness of Mrs. Pearce's front room was fully displayed at ten o'clock at night when a powerful oil lamp
stood on the middle of the table. The harsh light fell on the garden; cut straight across the lawn; lit up a child's
bucket and a purple aster and reached the hedge. Mrs. Flanders had left her sewing on the table. There were
her large reels of white cotton and her steel spectacles; her needle−case; her brown wool wound round an old
postcard. There were the bulrushes and the Strand magazines; and the linoleum sandy from the boys' boots. A
daddy−long− legs shot from corner to corner and hit the lamp globe. The wind blew straight dashes of rain
across the window, which flashed silver as they passed through the light. A single leaf tapped hurriedly,
persistently, upon the glass. There was a hurricane out at sea.
Archer could not sleep.
Mrs. Flanders stooped over him. "Think of the fairies," said Betty Flanders. "Think of the lovely, lovely birds
settling down on their nests. Now shut your eyes and see the old mother bird with a worm in her beak. Now
turn and shut your eyes," she murmured, "and shut your eyes."
The lodging−house seemed full of gurgling and rushing; the cistern overflowing; water bubbling and
squeaking and running along the pipes and streaming down the windows.
Jacob's Room 4
"What's all that water rushing in?" murmured Archer.
"It's only the bath water running away," said Mrs. Flanders.
Something snapped out of doors.
"I say, won't that steamer sink?" said Archer, opening his eyes.
"Of course it won't," said Mrs. Flanders. "The Captain's in bed long ago. Shut your eyes, and think of the
fairies, fast asleep, under the flowers."
"I thought he'd never get off−−such a hurricane," she whispered to Rebecca, who was bending over a
spirit−lamp in the small room next door. The wind rushed outside, but the small flame of the spirit−lamp
burnt quietly, shaded from the cot by a book stood on edge.
"Did he take his bottle well?" Mrs. Flanders whispered, and Rebecca nodded and went to the cot and turned
down the quilt, and Mrs. Flanders bent over and looked anxiously at the baby, asleep, but frowning. The
window shook, and Rebecca stole like a cat and wedged it.
The two women murmured over the spirit−lamp, plotting the eternal conspiracy of hush and clean bottles
while the wind raged and gave a sudden wrench at the cheap fastenings.
Both looked round at the cot. Their lips were pursed. Mrs. Flanders crossed over to the cot.
"Asleep?" whispered Rebecca, looking at the cot.
Mrs. Flanders nodded.
"Good−night, Rebecca," Mrs. Flanders murmured, and Rebecca called her ma'm, though they were
conspirators plotting the eternal conspiracy of hush and clean bottles.
Mrs. Flanders had left the lamp burning in the front room. There were her spectacles, her sewing; and a letter
with the Scarborough postmark. She had not drawn the curtains either.
The light blazed out across the patch of grass; fell on the child's green bucket with the gold line round it, and
upon the aster which trembled violently beside it. For the wind was tearing across the coast, hurling itself at
the hills, and leaping, in sudden gusts, on top of its own back. How it spread over the town in the hollow!
How the lights seemed to wink and quiver in its fury, lights in the harbour, lights in bedroom windows high
up! And rolling dark waves before it, it raced over the Atlantic, jerking the stars above the ships this way and
that.
There was a click in the front sitting−room. Mr. Pearce had extinguished the lamp. The garden went out. It
was but a dark patch. Every inch was rained upon. Every blade of grass was bent by rain. Eyelids would have
been fastened down by the rain. Lying on one's back one would have seen nothing but muddle and
confusion−−clouds turning and turning, and something yellow−tinted and sulphurous in the darkness.
The little boys in the front bedroom had thrown off their blankets and lay under the sheets. It was hot; rather
sticky and steamy. Archer lay spread out, with one arm striking across the pillow. He was flushed; and when
the heavy curtain blew out a little he turned and half−opened his eyes. The wind actually stirred the cloth on
the chest of drawers, and let in a little light, so that the sharp edge of the chest of drawers was visible, running
straight up, until a white shape bulged out; and a silver streak showed in the looking−glass.
Jacob's Room 5
In the other bed by the door Jacob lay asleep, fast asleep, profoundly unconscious. The sheep's jaw with the
big yellow teeth in it lay at his feet. He had kicked it against the iron bed−rail.
Outside the rain poured down more directly and powerfully as the wind fell in the early hours of the morning.
The aster was beaten to the earth. The child's bucket was half−full of rainwater; and the opal− shelled crab
slowly circled round the bottom, trying with its weakly legs to climb the steep side; trying again and falling
back, and trying again and again.

Chapter 2



"MRS. FLANDERS"−−"Poor Betty Flanders"−−"Dear Betty"−−"She's very attractive still"−−"Odd she don't
marry again!" "There's Captain Barfoot to be sure−−calls every Wednesday as regular as clockwork, and
never brings his wife."
"But that's Ellen Barfoot's fault," the ladies of Scarborough said. "She don't put herself out for no one."
"A man likes to have a son−−that we know."
"Some tumours have to be cut; but the sort my mother had you bear with for years and years, and never even
have a cup of tea brought up to you in bed."
(Mrs. Barfoot was an invalid.)
Elizabeth Flanders, of whom this and much more than this had been said and would be said, was, of course, a
widow in her prime. She was half− way between forty and fifty. Years and sorrow between them; the death of
Seabrook, her husband; three boys; poverty; a house on the outskirts of Scarborough; her brother, poor
Morty's, downfall and possible demise−− for where was he? what was he? Shading her eyes, she looked along
the road for Captain Barfoot−−yes, there he was, punctual as ever; the attentions of the Captain−−all ripened
Betty Flanders, enlarged her figure, tinged her face with jollity, and flooded her eyes for no reason that any
one could see perhaps three times a day.
True, there's no harm in crying for one's husband, and the tombstone, though plain, was a solid piece of work,
and on summer's days when the widow brought her boys to stand there one felt kindly towards her. Hats were
raised higher than usual; wives tugged their husbands' arms. Seabrook lay six foot beneath, dead these many
years; enclosed in three shells; the crevices sealed with lead, so that, had earth and wood been glass, doubtless
his very face lay visible beneath, the face of a young man whiskered, shapely, who had gone out
duck−shooting and refused to change his boots.
"Merchant of this city," the tombstone said; though why Betty Flanders had chosen so to call him when, as
many still remembered, he had only sat behind an office window for three months, and before that had broken
horses, ridden to hounds, farmed a few fields, and run a little wild−− well, she had to call him something. An
example for the boys.
Had he, then, been nothing? An unanswerable question, since even if it weren't the habit of the undertaker to
close the eyes, the light so soon goes out of them. At first, part of herself; now one of a company, he had
merged in the grass, the sloping hillside, the thousand white stones, some slanting, others upright, the decayed
wreaths, the crosses of green tin, the narrow yellow paths, and the lilacs that drooped in April, with a scent
like that of an invalid's bedroom, over the churchyard wall. Seabrook was now all that; and when, with her
skirt hitched up, feeding the chickens, she heard the bell for service or funeral, that was Seabrook's
voice−−the voice of the dead.
CHAPTER TWO 6
The rooster had been known to fly on her shoulder and peck her neck, so that now she carried a stick or took
one of the children with her when she went to feed the fowls.
"Wouldn't you like my knife, mother?" said Archer.
Sounding at the same moment as the bell, her son's voice mixed life and death inextricably, exhilaratingly.
"What a big knife for a small boy!" she said. She took it to please him. Then the rooster flew out of the
hen−house, and, shouting to Archer to shut the door into the kitchen garden, Mrs. Flanders set her meal down,
clucked for the hens, went bustling about the orchard, and was seen from over the way by Mrs. Cranch, who,
beating her mat against the wall, held it for a moment suspended while she observed to Mrs. Page next door
that Mrs. Flanders was in the orchard with the chickens.
Mrs. Page, Mrs. Cranch, and Mrs. Garfit could see Mrs. Flanders in the orchard because the orchard was a
piece of Dods Hill enclosed; and Dods Hill dominated the village. No words can exaggerate the importance of
Dods Hill. It was the earth; the world against the sky; the horizon of how many glances can best be computed
by those who have lived all their lives in the same village, only leaving it once to fight in the Crimea, like old
George Garfit, leaning over his garden gate smoking his pipe. The progress of the sun was measured by it; the
tint of the day laid against it to be judged.
"Now she's going up the hill with little John," said Mrs. Cranch to Mrs. Garfit, shaking her mat for the last
time, and bustling indoors. Opening the orchard gate, Mrs. Flanders walked to the top of Dods Hill, holding
John by the hand. Archer and Jacob ran in front or lagged behind; but they were in the Roman fortress when
she came there, and shouting out what ships were to be seen in the bay. For there was a magnificent view
−−moors behind, sea in front, and the whole of Scarborough from one end to the other laid out flat like a
puzzle. Mrs. Flanders, who was growing stout, sat down in the fortress and looked about her.
The entire gamut of the view's changes should have been known to her; its winter aspect, spring, summer and
autumn; how storms came up from the sea; how the moors shuddered and brightened as the clouds went over;
she should have noted the red spot where the villas were building; and the criss−cross of lines where the
allotments were cut; and the diamond flash of little glass houses in the sun. Or, if details like these escaped
her, she might have let her fancy play upon the gold tint of the sea at sunset, and thought how it lapped in
coins of gold upon the shingle. Little pleasure boats shoved out into it; the black arm of the pier hoarded it up.
The whole city was pink and gold; domed; mist− wreathed; resonant; strident. Banjoes strummed; the parade
smelt of tar which stuck to the heels; goats suddenly cantered their carriages through crowds. It was observed
how well the Corporation had laid out the flower−beds. Sometimes a straw hat was blown away. Tulips burnt
in the sun. Numbers of sponge−bag trousers were stretched in rows. Purple bonnets fringed soft, pink,
querulous faces on pillows in bath chairs. Triangular hoardings were wheeled along by men in white coats.
Captain George Boase had caught a monster shark. One side of the triangular hoarding said so in red, blue,
and yellow letters; and each line ended with three differently coloured notes of exclamation.
So that was a reason for going down into the Aquarium, where the sallow blinds, the stale smell of spirits of
salt, the bamboo chairs, the tables with ash−trays, the revolving fish, the attendant knitting behind six or seven
chocolate boxes (often she was quite alone with the fish for hours at a time) remained in the mind as part of
the monster shark, he himself being only a flabby yellow receptacle, like an empty Gladstone bag in a tank.
No one had ever been cheered by the Aquarium; but the faces of those emerging quickly lost their dim, chilled
expression when they perceived that it was only by standing in a queue that one could be admitted to the pier.
Once through the turnstiles, every one walked for a yard or two very briskly; some flagged at this stall; others
at that.
But it was the band that drew them all to it finally; even the fishermen on the lower pier taking up their pitch
within its range.
CHAPTER TWO 7
The band played in the Moorish kiosk. Number nine went up on the board. It was a waltz tune. The pale girls,
the old widow lady, the three Jews lodging in the same boarding−house, the dandy, the major, the horse−
dealer, and the gentleman of independent means, all wore the same blurred, drugged expression, and through
the chinks in the planks at their feet they could see the green summer waves, peacefully, amiably, swaying
round the iron pillars of the pier.
But there was a time when none of this had any existence (thought the young man leaning against the
railings). Fix your eyes upon the lady's skirt; the grey one will do−−above the pink silk stockings. It changes;
drapes her ankles−−the nineties; then it amplifies−−the seventies; now it's burnished red and stretched above a
crinoline−−the sixties; a tiny black foot wearing a white cotton stocking peeps out. Still sitting there?
Yes−−she's still on the pier. The silk now is sprigged with roses, but somehow one no longer sees so clearly.
There's no pier beneath us. The heavy chariot may swing along the turnpike road, but there's no pier for it to
stop at, and how grey and turbulent the sea is in the seventeenth century! Let's to the museum. Cannon−balls;
arrow− heads; Roman glass and a forceps green with verdigris. The Rev. Jaspar Floyd dug them up at his own
expense early in the forties in the Roman camp on Dods Hill−−see the little ticket with the faded writing on it.
And now, what's the next thing to see in Scarborough?
Mrs. Flanders sat on the raised circle of the Roman camp, patching Jacob's breeches; only looking up as she
sucked the end of her cotton, or when some insect dashed at her, boomed in her ear, and was gone.
John kept trotting up and slapping down in her lap grass or dead leaves which he called "tea," and she
arranged them methodically but absent− mindedly, laying the flowery heads of the grasses together, thinking
how Archer had been awake again last night; the church clock was ten or thirteen minutes fast; she wished she
could buy Garfit's acre.
"That's an orchid leaf, Johnny. Look at the little brown spots. Come, my dear. We must go home. Ar−cher!
Ja−cob!"
"Ar−cher! Ja−cob!" Johnny piped after her, pivoting round on his heel, and strewing the grass and leaves in
his hands as if he were sowing seed. Archer and Jacob jumped up from behind the mound where they had
been crouching with the intention of springing upon their mother unexpectedly, and they all began to walk
slowly home.
"Who is that?" said Mrs. Flanders, shading her eyes.
"That old man in the road?" said Archer, looking below.
"He's not an old man," said Mrs. Flanders. "He's−−no, he's not−−I thought it was the Captain, but it's Mr.
Floyd. Come along, boys."
"Oh, bother Mr. Floyd!" said Jacob, switching off a thistle's head, for he knew already that Mr. Floyd was
going to teach them Latin, as indeed he did for three years in his spare time, out of kindness, for there was no
other gentleman in the neighbourhood whom Mrs. Flanders could have asked to do such a thing, and the elder
boys were getting beyond her, and must be got ready for school, and it was more than most clergymen would
have done, coming round after tea, or having them in his own room −−as he could fit it in−−for the parish was
a very large one, and Mr. Floyd, like his father before him, visited cottages miles away on the moors, and, like
old Mr. Floyd, was a great scholar, which made it so unlikely−−she had never dreamt of such a thing. Ought
she to have guessed? But let alone being a scholar he was eight years younger than she was. She knew his
mother−−old Mrs. Floyd. She had tea there. And it was that very evening when she came back from having
tea with old Mrs. Floyd that she found the note in the hall and took it into the kitchen with her when she went
to give Rebecca the fish, thinking it must be something about the boys.
CHAPTER TWO 8
"Mr. Floyd brought it himself, did he?−−I think the cheese must be in the parcel in the hall−−oh, in the
hall−−" for she was reading. No, it was not about the boys.
"Yes, enough for fish−cakes to−morrow certainly−−Perhaps Captain Barfoot−−" she had come to the word
"love." She went into the garden and read, leaning against the walnut tree to steady herself. Up and down went
her breast. Seabrook came so vividly before her. She shook her head and was looking through her tears at the
little shifting leaves against the yellow sky when three geese, half−running, half−flying, scuttled across the
lawn with Johnny behind them, brandishing a stick.
Mrs. Flanders flushed with anger.
"How many times have I told you?" she cried, and seized him and snatched his stick away from him.
"But they'd escaped!" he cried, struggling to get free.
"You're a very naughty boy. If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times. I won't have you chasing the
geese!" she said, and crumpling Mr. Floyd's letter in her hand, she held Johnny fast and herded the geese back
into the orchard.
"How could I think of marriage!" she said to herself bitterly, as she fastened the gate with a piece of wire. She
had always disliked red hair in men, she thought, thinking of Mr. Floyd's appearance, that night when the boys
had gone to bed. And pushing her work−box away, she drew the blotting−paper towards her, and read Mr.
Floyd's letter again, and her breast went up and down when she came to the word "love," but not so fast this
time, for she saw Johnny chasing the geese, and knew that it was impossible for her to marry any one−−let
alone Mr. Floyd, who was so much younger than she was, but what a nice man−−and such a scholar too.
"Dear Mr. Floyd," she wrote.−−"Did I forget about the cheese?" she wondered, laying down her pen. No, she
had told Rebecca that the cheese was in the hall. "I am much surprised..." she wrote.
But the letter which Mr. Floyd found on the table when he got up early next morning did not begin "I am
much surprised," and it was such a motherly, respectful, inconsequent, regretful letter that he kept it for many
years; long after his marriage with Miss Wimbush, of Andover; long after he had left the village. For he asked
for a parish in Sheffield, which was given him; and, sending for Archer, Jacob, and John to say good−bye, he
told them to choose whatever they liked in his study to remember him by. Archer chose a paper−knife,
because he did not like to choose anything too good; Jacob chose the works of Byron in one volume; John,
who was still too young to make a proper choice, chose Mr. Floyd's kitten, which his brothers thought an
absurd choice, but Mr. Floyd upheld him when he said: "It has fur like you." Then Mr. Floyd spoke about the
King's Navy (to which Archer was going); and about Rugby (to which Jacob was going); and next day he
received a silver salver and went−−first to Sheffield, where he met Miss Wimbush, who was on a visit to her
uncle, then to Hackney−−then to Maresfield House, of which he became the principal, and finally, becoming
editor of a well−known series of Ecclesiastical Biographies, he retired to Hampstead with his wife and
daughter, and is often to be seen feeding the ducks on Leg of Mutton Pond. As for Mrs. Flanders's
letter−−when he looked for it the other day he could not find it, and did not like to ask his wife whether she
had put it away. Meeting Jacob in Piccadilly lately, he recognized him after three seconds. But Jacob had
grown such a fine young man that Mr. Floyd did not like to stop him in the street.
"Dear me," said Mrs. Flanders, when she read in the Scarborough and Harrogate Courier that the Rev.
Andrew Floyd, etc., etc., had been made Principal of Maresfield House, "that must be our Mr. Floyd."
A slight gloom fell upon the table. Jacob was helping himself to jam; the postman was talking to Rebecca in
the kitchen; there was a bee humming at the yellow flower which nodded at the open window. They were all
alive, that is to say, while poor Mr. Floyd was becoming Principal of Maresfield House.
CHAPTER TWO 9
Mrs. Flanders got up and went over to the fender and stroked Topaz on the neck behind the ears.
"Poor Topaz," she said (for Mr. Floyd's kitten was now a very old cat, a little mangy behind the ears, and one
of these days would have to be killed).
"Poor old Topaz," said Mrs. Flanders, as he stretched himself out in the sun, and she smiled, thinking how she
had had him gelded, and how she did not like red hair in men. Smiling, she went into the kitchen.
Jacob drew rather a dirty pocket−handkerchief across his face. He went upstairs to his room.
The stag−beetle dies slowly (it was John who collected the beetles). Even on the second day its legs were
supple. But the butterflies were dead. A whiff of rotten eggs had vanquished the pale clouded yellows which
came pelting across the orchard and up Dods Hill and away on to the moor, now lost behind a furze bush, then
off again helter−skelter in a broiling sun. A fritillary basked on a white stone in the Roman camp. From the
valley came the sound of church bells. They were all eating roast beef in Scarborough; for it was Sunday
when Jacob caught the pale clouded yellows in the clover field, eight miles from home.
Rebecca had caught the death's−head moth in the kitchen.
A strong smell of camphor came from the butterfly boxes.
Mixed with the smell of camphor was the unmistakable smell of seaweed. Tawny ribbons hung on the door.
The sun beat straight upon them.
The upper wings of the moth which Jacob held were undoubtedly marked with kidney−shaped spots of a
fulvous hue. But there was no crescent upon the underwing. The tree had fallen the night he caught it. There
had been a volley of pistol−shots suddenly in the depths of the wood. And his mother had taken him for a
burglar when he came home late. The only one of her sons who never obeyed her, she said.
Morris called it "an extremely local insect found in damp or marshy places." But Morris is sometimes wrong.
Sometimes Jacob, choosing a very fine pen, made a correction in the margin.
The tree had fallen, though it was a windless night, and the lantern, stood upon the ground, had lit up the still
green leaves and the dead beech leaves. It was a dry place. A toad was there. And the red underwing had
circled round the light and flashed and gone. The red underwing had never come back, though Jacob had
waited. It was after twelve when he crossed the lawn and saw his mother in the bright room, playing patience,
sitting up.
"How you frightened me!" she had cried. She thought something dreadful had happened. And he woke
Rebecca, who had to be up so early.
There he stood pale, come out of the depths of darkness, in the hot room, blinking at the light.
No, it could not be a straw−bordered underwing.
The mowing−machine always wanted oiling. Barnet turned it under Jacob's window, and it creaked−−creaked,
and rattled across the lawn and creaked again.
Now it was clouding over.
Back came the sun, dazzlingly.
CHAPTER TWO 10
It fell like an eye upon the stirrups, and then suddenly and yet very gently rested upon the bed, upon the
alarum clock, and upon the butterfly box stood open. The pale clouded yellows had pelted over the moor; they
had zigzagged across the purple clover. The fritillaries flaunted along the hedgerows. The blues settled on
little bones lying on the turf with the sun beating on them, and the painted ladies and the peacocks feasted
upon bloody entrails dropped by a hawk. Miles away from home, in a hollow among teasles beneath a ruin, he
had found the commas. He had seen a white admiral circling higher and higher round an oak tree, but he had
never caught it. An old cottage woman living alone, high up, had told him of a purple butterfly which came
every summer to her garden. The fox cubs played in the gorse in the early morning, she told him. And if you
looked out at dawn you could always see two badgers. Sometimes they knocked each other over like two boys
fighting, she said.
"You won't go far this afternoon, Jacob," said his mother, popping her head in at the door, "for the Captain's
coming to say good−bye." It was the last day of the Easter holidays.
Wednesday was Captain Barfoot's day. He dressed himself very neatly in blue serge, took his rubber−shod
stick−−for he was lame and wanted two fingers on the left hand, having served his country−−and set out from
the house with the flagstaff precisely at four o'clock in the afternoon.
At three Mr. Dickens, the bath−chair man, had called for Mrs. Barfoot.
"Move me," she would say to Mr. Dickens, after sitting on the esplanade for fifteen minutes. And again,
"That'll do, thank you, Mr. Dickens." At the first command he would seek the sun; at the second he would stay
the chair there in the bright strip.
An old inhabitant himself, he had much in common with Mrs. Barfoot−− James Coppard's daughter. The
drinking−fountain, where West Street joins Broad Street, is the gift of James Coppard, who was mayor at the
time of Queen Victoria's jubilee, and Coppard is painted upon municipal watering−carts and over shop
windows, and upon the zinc blinds of solicitors' consulting−room windows. But Ellen Barfoot never visited
the Aquarium (though she had known Captain Boase who had caught the shark quite well), and when the men
came by with the posters she eyed them superciliously, for she knew that she would never see the Pierrots, or
the brothers Zeno, or Daisy Budd and her troupe of performing seals. For Ellen Barfoot in her bath−chair on
the esplanade was a prisoner−− civilization's prisoner−−all the bars of her cage falling across the esplanade on
sunny days when the town hall, the drapery stores, the swimming−bath, and the memorial hall striped the
ground with shadow.
An old inhabitant himself, Mr. Dickens would stand a little behind her, smoking his pipe. She would ask him
questions−−who people were−−who now kept Mr. Jones's shop−−then about the season−−and had Mrs.
Dickens tried, whatever it might be−−the words issuing from her lips like crumbs of dry biscuit.
She closed her eyes. Mr. Dickens took a turn. The feelings of a man had not altogether deserted him, though
as you saw him coming towards you, you noticed how one knobbed black boot swung tremulously in front of
the other; how there was a shadow between his waistcoat and his trousers; how he leant forward unsteadily,
like an old horse who finds himself suddenly out of the shafts drawing no cart. But as Mr. Dickens sucked in
the smoke and puffed it out again, the feelings of a man were perceptible in his eyes. He was thinking how
Captain Barfoot was now on his way to Mount Pleasant; Captain Barfoot, his master. For at home in the little
sitting−room above the mews, with the canary in the window, and the girls at the sewing−machine, and Mrs.
Dickens huddled up with the rheumatics−−at home where he was made little of, the thought of being in the
employ of Captain Barfoot supported him. He liked to think that while he chatted with Mrs. Barfoot on the
front, he helped the Captain on his way to Mrs. Flanders. He, a man, was in charge of Mrs. Barfoot, a woman.
Turning, he saw that she was chatting with Mrs. Rogers. Turning again, he saw that Mrs. Rogers had moved
on. So he came back to the bath−chair, and Mrs. Barfoot asked him the time, and he took out his great silver
CHAPTER TWO 11
watch and told her the time very obligingly, as if he knew a great deal more about the time and everything
than she did. But Mrs. Barfoot knew that Captain Barfoot was on his way to Mrs. Flanders.
Indeed he was well on his way there, having left the tram, and seeing Dods Hill to the south−east, green
against a blue sky that was suffused with dust colour on the horizon. He was marching up the hill. In spite of
his lameness there was something military in his approach. Mrs. Jarvis, as she came out of the Rectory gate,
saw him coming, and her Newfoundland dog, Nero, slowly swept his tail from side to side.
"Oh, Captain Barfoot!" Mrs. Jarvis exclaimed.
"Good−day, Mrs. Jarvis," said the Captain.
They walked on together, and when they reached Mrs. Flanders's gate Captain Barfoot took off his tweed cap,
and said, bowing very courteously:
"Good−day to you, Mrs. Jarvis."
And Mrs. Jarvis walked on alone.
She was going to walk on the moor. Had she again been pacing her lawn late at night? Had she again tapped
on the study window and cried: "Look at the moon, look at the moon, Herbert!"
And Herbert looked at the moon.
Mrs. Jarvis walked on the moor when she was unhappy, going as far as a certain saucer−shaped hollow,
though she always meant to go to a more distant ridge; and there she sat down, and took out the little book
hidden beneath her cloak and read a few lines of poetry, and looked about her. She was not very unhappy,
and, seeing that she was forty− five, never perhaps would be very unhappy, desperately unhappy that is, and
leave her husband, and ruin a good man's career, as she sometimes threatened.
Still there is no need to say what risks a clergyman's wife runs when she walks on the moor. Short, dark, with
kindling eyes, a pheasant's feather in her hat, Mrs. Jarvis was just the sort of woman to lose her faith upon the
moors−−to confound her God with the universal that is−− but she did not lose her faith, did not leave her
husband, never read her poem through, and went on walking the moors, looking at the moon behind the elm
trees, and feeling as she sat on the grass high above Scarborough... Yes, yes, when the lark soars; when the
sheep, moving a step or two onwards, crop the turf, and at the same time set their bells tinkling; when the
breeze first blows, then dies down, leaving the cheek kissed; when the ships on the sea below seem to cross
each other and pass on as if drawn by an invisible hand; when there are distant concussions in the air and
phantom horsemen galloping, ceasing; when the horizon swims blue, green, emotional−−then Mrs. Jarvis,
heaving a sigh, thinks to herself, "If only some one could give me... if I could give some one...." But she does
not know what she wants to give, nor who could give it her.
"Mrs. Flanders stepped out only five minutes ago, Captain," said Rebecca. Captain Barfoot sat him down in
the arm−chair to wait. Resting his elbows on the arms, putting one hand over the other, sticking his lame leg
straight out, and placing the stick with the rubber ferrule beside it, he sat perfectly still. There was something
rigid about him. Did he think? Probably the same thoughts again and again. But were they "nice" thoughts,
interesting thoughts? He was a man with a temper; tenacious, faithful. Women would have felt, "Here is law.
Here is order. Therefore we must cherish this man. He is on the Bridge at night," and, handing him his cup, or
whatever it might be, would run on to visions of shipwreck and disaster, in which all the passengers come
tumbling from their cabins, and there is the captain, buttoned in his pea−jacket, matched with the storm,
vanquished by it but by none other. "Yet I have a soul," Mrs. Jarvis would bethink her, as Captain Barfoot
suddenly blew his nose in a great red bandanna handkerchief, "and it's the man's stupidity that's the cause of
CHAPTER TWO 12
this, and the storm's my storm as well as his"... so Mrs. Jarvis would bethink her when the Captain dropped in
to see them and found Herbert out, and spent two or three hours, almost silent, sitting in the arm−chair. But
Betty Flanders thought nothing of the kind.
"Oh, Captain," said Mrs. Flanders, bursting into the drawing−room, "I had to run after Barker's man... I hope
Rebecca... I hope Jacob..."
She was very much out of breath, yet not at all upset, and as she put down the hearth−brush which she had
bought of the oil−man, she said it was hot, flung the window further open, straightened a cover, picked up a
book, as if she were very confident, very fond of the Captain, and a great many years younger than he was.
Indeed, in her blue apron she did not look more than thirty−five. He was well over fifty.
She moved her hands about the table; the Captain moved his head from side to side, and made little sounds, as
Betty went on chattering, completely at his ease−−after twenty years.
"Well," he said at length, "I've heard from Mr. Polegate."
He had heard from Mr. Polegate that he could advise nothing better than to send a boy to one of the
universities.
"Mr. Floyd was at Cambridge... no, at Oxford... well, at one or the other," said Mrs. Flanders.
She looked out of the window. Little windows, and the lilac and green of the garden were reflected in her
eyes.
"Archer is doing very well," she said. "I have a very nice report from Captain Maxwell."
"I will leave you the letter to show Jacob," said the Captain, putting it clumsily back in its envelope.
"Jacob is after his butterflies as usual," said Mrs. Flanders irritably, but was surprised by a sudden
afterthought, "Cricket begins this week, of course."
"Edward Jenkinson has handed in his resignation," said Captain Barfoot.
"Then you will stand for the Council?" Mrs. Flanders exclaimed, looking the Captain full in the face.
"Well, about that," Captain Barfoot began, settling himself rather deeper in his chair.
Jacob Flanders, therefore, went up to Cambridge in October, 1906.

Chapter 3


"This is not a smoking−carriage," Mrs. Norman protested, nervously but very feebly, as the door swung open
and a powerfully built young man jumped in. He seemed not to hear her. The train did not stop before it
reached Cambridge, and here she was shut up alone, in a railway carriage, with a young man.
She touched the spring of her dressing−case, and ascertained that the scent−bottle and a novel from Mudie's
were both handy (the young man was standing up with his back to her, putting his bag in the rack). She would
throw the scent−bottle with her right hand, she decided, and tug the communication cord with her left. She
was fifty years of age, and had a son at college. Nevertheless, it is a fact that men are dangerous. She read half
a column of her newspaper; then stealthily looked over the edge to decide the question of safety by the
infallible test of appearance.... She would like to offer him her paper. But do young men read the Morning
CHAPTER THREE 13
Post? She looked to see what he was reading−−the Daily Telegraph.
Taking note of socks (loose), of tie (shabby), she once more reached his face. She dwelt upon his mouth. The
lips were shut. The eyes bent down, since he was reading. All was firm, yet youthful, indifferent,
unconscious−−as for knocking one down! No, no, no! She looked out of the window, smiling slightly now,
and then came back again, for he didn't notice her. Grave, unconscious... now he looked up, past her... he
seemed so out of place, somehow, alone with an elderly lady... then he fixed his eyes−−which were blue−−on
the landscape. He had not realized her presence, she thought. Yet it was none of HER fault that this was not a
smoking−carriage−−if that was what he meant.
Nobody sees any one as he is, let alone an elderly lady sitting opposite a strange young man in a railway
carriage. They see a whole−−they see all sorts of things−−they see themselves.... Mrs. Norman now read three
pages of one of Mr. Norris's novels. Should she say to the young man (and after all he was just the same age
as her own boy): "If you want to smoke, don't mind me"? No: he seemed absolutely indifferent to her
presence... she did not wish to interrupt.
But since, even at her age, she noted his indifference, presumably he was in some way or other−−to her at
least−−nice, handsome, interesting, distinguished, well built, like her own boy? One must do the best one can
with her report. Anyhow, this was Jacob Flanders, aged nineteen. It is no use trying to sum people up. One
must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entirely what is done−−for instance, when the train drew
into the station, Mr. Flanders burst open the door, and put the lady's dressing−case out for her, saying, or
rather mumbling: "Let me" very shyly; indeed he was rather clumsy about it.
"Who..." said the lady, meeting her son; but as there was a great crowd on the platform and Jacob had already
gone, she did not finish her sentence. As this was Cambridge, as she was staying there for the week− end, as
she saw nothing but young men all day long, in streets and round tables, this sight of her fellow−traveller was
completely lost in her mind, as the crooked pin dropped by a child into the wishing−well twirls in the water
and disappears for ever.
They say the sky is the same everywhere. Travellers, the shipwrecked, exiles, and the dying draw comfort
from the thought, and no doubt if you are of a mystical tendency, consolation, and even explanation, shower
down from the unbroken surface. But above Cambridge−−anyhow above the roof of King's College
Chapel−−there is a difference. Out at sea a great city will cast a brightness into the night. Is it fanciful to
suppose the sky, washed into the crevices of King's College Chapel, lighter, thinner, more sparkling than the
sky elsewhere? Does Cambridge burn not only into the night, but into the day?
Look, as they pass into service, how airily the gowns blow out, as though nothing dense and corporeal were
within. What sculptured faces, what certainty, authority controlled by piety, although great boots march under
the gowns. In what orderly procession they advance. Thick wax candles stand upright; young men rise in
white gowns; while the subservient eagle bears up for inspection the great white book.
An inclined plane of light comes accurately through each window, purple and yellow even in its most diffused
dust, while, where it breaks upon stone, that stone is softly chalked red, yellow, and purple. Neither snow nor
greenery, winter nor summer, has power over the old stained glass. As the sides of a lantern protect the flame
so that it burns steady even in the wildest night−−burns steady and gravely illumines the tree−trunks−−so
inside the Chapel all was orderly. Gravely sounded the voices; wisely the organ replied, as if buttressing
human faith with the assent of the elements. The white−robed figures crossed from side to side; now mounted
steps, now descended, all very orderly.
... If you stand a lantern under a tree every insect in the forest creeps up to it−−a curious assembly, since
though they scramble and swing and knock their heads against the glass, they seem to have no
purpose−−something senseless inspires them. One gets tired of watching them, as they amble round the
CHAPTER THREE 14
lantern and blindly tap as if for admittance, one large toad being the most besotted of any and shouldering his
way through the rest. Ah, but what's that? A terrifying volley of pistol−shots rings out−−cracks sharply;
ripples spread−− silence laps smooth over sound. A tree−−a tree has fallen, a sort of death in the forest. After
that, the wind in the trees sounds melancholy.
But this service in King's College Chapel−−why allow women to take part in it? Surely, if the mind wanders
(and Jacob looked extraordinarily vacant, his head thrown back, his hymn−book open at the wrong place), if
the mind wanders it is because several hat shops and cupboards upon cupboards of coloured dresses are
displayed upon rush−bottomed chairs. Though heads and bodies may be devout enough, one has a sense of
individuals−−some like blue, others brown; some feathers, others pansies and forget−me−nots. No one would
think of bringing a dog into church. For though a dog is all very well on a gravel path, and shows no
disrespect to flowers, the way he wanders down an aisle, looking, lifting a paw, and approaching a pillar with
a purpose that makes the blood run cold with horror (should you be one of a congregation−−alone, shyness is
out of the question), a dog destroys the service completely. So do these women−−though separately devout,
distinguished, and vouched for by the theology, mathematics, Latin, and Greek of their husbands. Heaven
knows why it is. For one thing, thought Jacob, they're as ugly as sin.
Now there was a scraping and murmuring. He caught Timmy Durrant's eye; looked very sternly at him; and
then, very solemnly, winked.
"Waverley," the villa on the road to Girton was called, not that Mr. Plumer admired Scott or would have
chosen any name at all, but names are useful when you have to entertain undergraduates, and as they sat
waiting for the fourth undergraduate, on Sunday at lunch−time, there was talk of names upon gates.
"How tiresome," Mrs. Plumer interrupted impulsively. "Does anybody know Mr. Flanders?"
Mr. Durrant knew him; and therefore blushed slightly, and said, awkwardly, something about being
sure−−looking at Mr. Plumer and hitching the right leg of his trouser as he spoke. Mr. Plumer got up and
stood in front of the fireplace. Mrs. Plumer laughed like a straightforward friendly fellow. In short, anything
more horrible than the scene, the setting, the prospect, even the May garden being afflicted with chill sterility
and a cloud choosing that moment to cross the sun, cannot be imagined. There was the garden, of course.
Every one at the same moment looked at it. Owing to the cloud, the leaves ruffled grey, and the
sparrows−−there were two sparrows.
"I think," said Mrs. Plumer, taking advantage of the momentary respite, while the young men stared at the
garden, to look at her husband, and he, not accepting full responsibility for the act, nevertheless touched the
bell.
There can be no excuse for this outrage upon one hour of human life, save the reflection which occurred to
Mr. Plumer as he carved the mutton, that if no don ever gave a luncheon party, if Sunday after Sunday passed,
if men went down, became lawyers, doctors, members of Parliament, business men−−if no don ever gave a
luncheon party−−
"Now, does lamb make the mint sauce, or mint sauce make the lamb?" he asked the young man next him, to
break a silence which had already lasted five minutes and a half.
"I don't know, sir," said the young man, blushing very vividly.
At this moment in came Mr. Flanders. He had mistaken the time.
Now, though they had finished their meat, Mrs. Plumer took a second helping of cabbage. Jacob determined,
of course, that he would eat his meat in the time it took her to finish her cabbage, looking once or twice to
CHAPTER THREE 15
measure his speed−−only he was infernally hungry. Seeing this, Mrs. Plumer said that she was sure Mr.
Flanders would not mind−−and the tart was brought in. Nodding in a peculiar way, she directed the maid to
give Mr. Flanders a second helping of mutton. She glanced at the mutton. Not much of the leg would be left
for luncheon.
It was none of her fault−−since how could she control her father begetting her forty years ago in the suburbs
of Manchester? and once begotten, how could she do other than grow up cheese−paring, ambitious, with an
instinctively accurate notion of the rungs of the ladder and an ant−like assiduity in pushing George Plumer
ahead of her to the top of the ladder? What was at the top of the ladder? A sense that all the rungs were
beneath one apparently; since by the time that George Plumer became Professor of Physics, or whatever it
might be, Mrs. Plumer could only be in a condition to cling tight to her eminence, peer down at the ground,
and goad her two plain daughters to climb the rungs of the ladder.
"I was down at the races yesterday," she said, "with my two little girls."
It was none of THEIR fault either. In they came to the drawing−room, in white frocks and blue sashes. They
handed the cigarettes. Rhoda had inherited her father's cold grey eyes. Cold grey eyes George Plumer had, but
in them was an abstract light. He could talk about Persia and the Trade winds, the Reform Bill and the cycle
of the harvests. Books were on his shelves by Wells and Shaw; on the table serious six−penny weeklies
written by pale men in muddy boots−−the weekly creak and screech of brains rinsed in cold water and wrung
dry−−melancholy papers.
"I don't feel that I know the truth about anything till I've read them both!" said Mrs. Plumer brightly, tapping
the table of contents with her bare red hand, upon which the ring looked so incongruous.
"Oh God, oh God, oh God!" exclaimed Jacob, as the four undergraduates left the house. "Oh, my God!"
"Bloody beastly!" he said, scanning the street for lilac or bicycle−− anything to restore his sense of freedom.
"Bloody beastly," he said to Timmy Durrant, summing up his discomfort at the world shown him at
lunch−time, a world capable of existing−−there was no doubt about that−−but so unnecessary, such a thing to
believe in−− Shaw and Wells and the serious sixpenny weeklies! What were they after, scrubbing and
demolishing, these elderly people? Had they never read Homer, Shakespeare, the Elizabethans? He saw it
clearly outlined against the feelings he drew from youth and natural inclination. The poor devils had rigged up
this meagre object. Yet something of pity was in him. Those wretched little girls−−
The extent to which he was disturbed proves that he was already agog. Insolent he was and inexperienced, but
sure enough the cities which the elderly of the race have built upon the skyline showed like brick suburbs,
barracks, and places of discipline against a red and yellow flame. He was impressionable; but the word is
contradicted by the composure with which he hollowed his hand to screen a match. He was a young man of
substance.
Anyhow, whether undergraduate or shop boy, man or woman, it must come as a shock about the age of
twenty−−the world of the elderly−−thrown up in such black outline upon what we are; upon the reality; the
moors and Byron; the sea and the lighthouse; the sheep's jaw with the yellow teeth in it; upon the obstinate
irrepressible conviction which makes youth so intolerably disagreeable−−"I am what I am, and intend to be
it," for which there will be no form in the world unless Jacob makes one for himself. The Plumers will try to
prevent him from making it. Wells and Shaw and the serious sixpenny weeklies will sit on its head. Every
time he lunches out on Sunday−−at dinner parties and tea parties−−there will be this same
shock−−horror−−discomfort−−then pleasure, for he draws into him at every step as he walks by the river such
steady certainty, such reassurance from all sides, the trees bowing, the grey spires soft in the blue, voices
blowing and seeming suspended in the air, the springy air of May, the elastic air with its particles−−chestnut
CHAPTER THREE 16
bloom, pollen, whatever it is that gives the May air its potency, blurring the trees, gumming the buds, daubing
the green. And the river too runs past, not at flood, nor swiftly, but cloying the oar that dips in it and drops
white drops from the blade, swimming green and deep over the bowed rushes, as if lavishly caressing them.
Where they moored their boat the trees showered down, so that their topmost leaves trailed in the ripples and
the green wedge that lay in the water being made of leaves shifted in leaf−breadths as the real leaves shifted.
Now there was a shiver of wind−−instantly an edge of sky; and as Durrant ate cherries he dropped the stunted
yellow cherries through the green wedge of leaves, their stalks twinkling as they wriggled in and out, and
sometimes one half−bitten cherry would go down red into the green. The meadow was on a level with Jacob's
eyes as he lay back; gilt with buttercups, but the grass did not run like the thin green water of the graveyard
grass about to overflow the tombstones, but stood juicy and thick. Looking up, backwards, he saw the legs of
children deep in the grass, and the legs of cows. Munch, munch, he heard; then a short step through the grass;
then again munch, munch, munch, as they tore the grass short at the roots. In front of him two white
butterflies circled higher and higher round the elm tree.
"Jacob's off," thought Durrant looking up from his novel. He kept reading a few pages and then looking up in
a curiously methodical manner, and each time he looked up he took a few cherries out of the bag and ate them
abstractedly. Other boats passed them, crossing the backwater from side to side to avoid each other, for many
were now moored, and there were now white dresses and a flaw in the column of air between two trees, round
which curled a thread of blue−−Lady Miller's picnic party. Still more boats kept coming, and Durrant, without
getting up, shoved their boat closer to the bank.
"Oh−h−h−h," groaned Jacob, as the boat rocked, and the trees rocked, and the white dresses and the white
flannel trousers drew out long and wavering up the bank.
"Oh−h−h−h!" He sat up, and felt as if a piece of elastic had snapped in his face.
"They're friends of my mother's," said Durrant. "So old Bow took no end of trouble about the boat."
And this boat had gone from Falmouth to St. Ives Bay, all round the coast. A larger boat, a ten−ton yacht,
about the twentieth of June, properly fitted out, Durrant said...
"There's the cash difficulty," said Jacob.
"My people'll see to that," said Durrant (the son of a banker, deceased).
"I intend to preserve my economic independence," said Jacob stiffly. (He was getting excited.)
"My mother said something about going to Harrogate," he said with a little annoyance, feeling the pocket
where he kept his letters.
"Was that true about your uncle becoming a Mohammedan?" asked Timmy Durrant.
Jacob had told the story of his Uncle Morty in Durrant's room the night before.
"I expect he's feeding the sharks, if the truth were known," said Jacob. "I say, Durrant, there's none left!" he
exclaimed, crumpling the bag which had held the cherries, and throwing it into the river. He saw Lady Miller's
picnic party on the island as he threw the bag into the river.
A sort of awkwardness, grumpiness, gloom came into his eyes.
"Shall we move on... this beastly crowd..." he said.
CHAPTER THREE 17
So up they went, past the island.
The feathery white moon never let the sky grow dark; all night the chestnut blossoms were white in the green;
dim was the cow−parsley in the meadows.
The waiters at Trinity must have been shuffling china plates like cards, from the clatter that could be heard in
the Great Court. Jacob's rooms, however, were in Neville's Court; at the top; so that reaching his door one
went in a little out of breath; but he wasn't there. Dining in Hall, presumably. It will be quite dark in Neville's
Court long before midnight, only the pillars opposite will always be white, and the fountains. A curious effect
the gate has, like lace upon pale green. Even in the window you hear the plates; a hum of talk, too, from the
diners; the Hall lit up, and the swing−doors opening and shutting with a soft thud. Some are late.
Jacob's room had a round table and two low chairs. There were yellow flags in a jar on the mantelpiece; a
photograph of his mother; cards from societies with little raised crescents, coats of arms, and initials; notes
and pipes; on the table lay paper ruled with a red margin−−an essay, no doubt−−"Does History consist of the
Biographies of Great Men?" There were books enough; very few French books; but then any one who's worth
anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, with extravagant enthusiasm. Lives of the Duke of
Wellington, for example; Spinoza; the works of Dickens; the Faery Queen; a Greek dictionary with the petals
of poppies pressed to silk between the pages; all the Elizabethans. His slippers were incredibly shabby, like
boats burnt to the water's rim. Then there were photographs from the Greeks, and a mezzotint from Sir
Joshua−−all very English. The works of Jane Austen, too, in deference, perhaps, to some one else's standard.
Carlyle was a prize. There were books upon the Italian painters of the Renaissance, a Manual of the Diseases
of the Horse, and all the usual text−books. Listless is the air in an empty room, just swelling the curtain; the
flowers in the jar shift. One fibre in the wicker arm−chair creaks, though no one sits there.
Coming down the steps a little sideways [Jacob sat on the window−seat talking to Durrant; he smoked, and
Durrant looked at the map], the old man, with his hands locked behind him, his gown floating black, lurched,
unsteadily, near the wall; then, upstairs he went into his room. Then another, who raised his hand and praised
the columns, the gate, the sky; another, tripping and smug. Each went up a staircase; three lights were lit in the
dark windows.
If any light burns above Cambridge, it must be from three such rooms; Greek burns here; science there;
philosophy on the ground floor. Poor old Huxtable can't walk straight;−−Sopwith, too, has praised the sky any
night these twenty years; and Cowan still chuckles at the same stories. It is not simple, or pure, or wholly
splendid, the lamp of learning, since if you see them there under its light (whether Rossetti's on the wall, or
Van Gogh reproduced, whether there are lilacs in the bowl or rusty pipes), how priestly they look! How like a
suburb where you go to see a view and eat a special cake! "We are the sole purveyors of this cake." Back you
go to London; for the treat is over.
Old Professor Huxtable, performing with the method of a clock his change of dress, let himself down into his
chair; filled his pipe; chose his paper; crossed his feet; and extracted his glasses. The whole flesh of his face
then fell into folds as if props were removed. Yet strip a whole seat of an underground railway carriage of its
heads and old Huxtable's head will hold them all. Now, as his eye goes down the print, what a procession
tramps through the corridors of his brain, orderly, quick−stepping, and reinforced, as the march goes on, by
fresh runnels, till the whole hall, dome, whatever one calls it, is populous with ideas. Such a muster takes
place in no other brain. Yet sometimes there he'll sit for hours together, gripping the arm of the chair, like a
man holding fast because stranded, and then, just because his corn twinges, or it may be the gout, what
execrations, and, dear me, to hear him talk of money, taking out his leather purse and grudging even the
smallest silver coin, secretive and suspicious as an old peasant woman with all her lies. Strange paralysis and
constriction−−marvellous illumination. Serene over it all rides the great full brow, and sometimes asleep or in
the quiet spaces of the night you might fancy that on a pillow of stone he lay triumphant.
CHAPTER THREE 18
Sopwith, meanwhile, advancing with a curious trip from the fire−place, cut the chocolate cake into segments.
Until midnight or later there would be undergraduates in his room, sometimes as many as twelve, sometimes
three or four; but nobody got up when they went or when they came; Sopwith went on talking. Talking,
talking, talking−−as if everything could be talked−−the soul itself slipped through the lips in thin silver disks
which dissolve in young men's minds like silver, like moonlight. Oh, far away they'd remember it, and deep in
dulness gaze back on it, and come to refresh themselves again.
"Well, I never. That's old Chucky. My dear boy, how's the world treating you?" And in came poor little
Chucky, the unsuccessful provincial, Stenhouse his real name, but of course Sopwith brought back by using
the other everything, everything, "all I could never be"−−yes, though next day, buying his newspaper and
catching the early train, it all seemed to him childish, absurd; the chocolate cake, the young men; Sopwith
summing things up; no, not all; he would send his son there. He would save every penny to send his son there.
Sopwith went on talking; twining stiff fibres of awkward speech−−things young men blurted out−−plaiting
them round his own smooth garland, making the bright side show, the vivid greens, the sharp thorns,
manliness. He loved it. Indeed to Sopwith a man could say anything, until perhaps he'd grown old, or gone
under, gone deep, when the silver disks would tinkle hollow, and the inscription read a little too simple, and
the old stamp look too pure, and the impress always the same−−a Greek boy's head. But he would respect still.
A woman, divining the priest, would, involuntarily, despise.
Cowan, Erasmus Cowan, sipped his port alone, or with one rosy little man, whose memory held precisely the
same span of time; sipped his port, and told his stories, and without book before him intoned Latin, Virgil and
Catullus, as if language were wine upon his lips. Only−−sometimes it will come over one−−what if the poet
strode in? "THIS my image?" he might ask, pointing to the chubby man, whose brain is, after all, Virgil's
representative among us, though the body gluttonize, and as for arms, bees, or even the plough, Cowan takes
his trips abroad with a French novel in his pocket, a rug about his knees, and is thankful to be home again in
his place, in his line, holding up in his snug little mirror the image of Virgil, all rayed round with good stories
of the dons of Trinity and red beams of port. But language is wine upon his lips. Nowhere else would Virgil
hear the like. And though, as she goes sauntering along the Backs, old Miss Umphelby sings him melodiously
enough, accurately too, she is always brought up by this question as she reaches Clare Bridge: "But if I met
him, what should I wear?"−−and then, taking her way up the avenue towards Newnham, she lets her fancy
play upon other details of men's meeting with women which have never got into print. Her lectures, therefore,
are not half so well attended as those of Cowan, and the thing she might have said in elucidation of the text for
ever left out. In short, face a teacher with the image of the taught and the mirror breaks. But Cowan sipped his
port, his exaltation over, no longer the representative of Virgil. No, the builder, assessor, surveyor, rather;
ruling lines between names, hanging lists above doors. Such is the fabric through which the light must shine,
if shine it can−− the light of all these languages, Chinese and Russian, Persian and Arabic, of symbols and
figures, of history, of things that are known and things that are about to be known. So that if at night, far out at
sea over the tumbling waves, one saw a haze on the waters, a city illuminated, a whiteness even in the sky,
such as that now over the Hall of Trinity where they're still dining, or washing up plates, that would be the
light burning there−−the light of Cambridge.
"Let's go round to Simeon's room," said Jacob, and they rolled up the map, having got the whole thing settled.
All the lights were coming out round the court, and falling on the cobbles, picking out dark patches of grass
and single daisies. The young men were now back in their rooms. Heaven knows what they were doing. What
was it that could DROP like that? And leaning down over a foaming window−box, one stopped another
hurrying past, and upstairs they went and down they went, until a sort of fulness settled on the court, the hive
full of bees, the bees home thick with gold, drowsy, humming, suddenly vocal; the Moonlight Sonata
answered by a waltz.
The Moonlight Sonata tinkled away; the waltz crashed. Although young men still went in and out, they
CHAPTER THREE 19
walked as if keeping engagements. Now and then there was a thud, as if some heavy piece of furniture had
fallen, unexpectedly, of its own accord, not in the general stir of life after dinner. One supposed that young
men raised their eyes from their books as the furniture fell. Were they reading? Certainly there was a sense of
concentration in the air. Behind the grey walls sat so many young men, some undoubtedly reading, magazines,
shilling shockers, no doubt; legs, perhaps, over the arms of chairs; smoking; sprawling over tables, and
writing while their heads went round in a circle as the pen moved−− simple young men, these, who
would−−but there is no need to think of them grown old; others eating sweets; here they boxed; and, well, Mr.
Hawkins must have been mad suddenly to throw up his window and bawl: "Jo−−seph! Jo−−seph!" and then
he ran as hard as ever he could across the court, while an elderly man, in a green apron, carrying an immense
pile of tin covers, hesitated, balanced, and then went on. But this was a diversion. There were young men who
read, lying in shallow arm−chairs, holding their books as if they had hold in their hands of something that
would see them through; they being all in a torment, coming from midland towns, clergymen's sons. Others
read Keats. And those long histories in many volumes−−surely some one was now beginning at the beginning
in order to understand the Holy Roman Empire, as one must. That was part of the concentration, though it
would be dangerous on a hot spring night−− dangerous, perhaps, to concentrate too much upon single books,
actual chapters, when at any moment the door opened and Jacob appeared; or Richard Bonamy, reading Keats
no longer, began making long pink spills from an old newspaper, bending forward, and looking eager and
contented no more, but almost fierce. Why? Only perhaps that Keats died young−−one wants to write poetry
too and to love−−oh, the brutes! It's damnably difficult. But, after all, not so difficult if on the next staircase,
in the large room, there are two, three, five young men all convinced of this−−of brutality, that is, and the
clear division between right and wrong. There was a sofa, chairs, a square table, and the window being open,
one could see how they sat−−legs issuing here, one there crumpled in a corner of the sofa; and, presumably,
for you could not see him, somebody stood by the fender, talking. Anyhow, Jacob, who sat astride a chair and
ate dates from a long box, burst out laughing. The answer came from the sofa corner; for his pipe was held in
the air, then replaced. Jacob wheeled round. He had something to say to THAT, though the sturdy red−haired
boy at the table seemed to deny it, wagging his head slowly from side to side; and then, taking out his
penknife, he dug the point of it again and again into a knot in the table, as if affirming that the voice from the
fender spoke the truth−−which Jacob could not deny. Possibly, when he had done arranging the date−stones,
he might find something to say to it−−indeed his lips opened−−only then there broke out a roar of laughter.
The laughter died in the air. The sound of it could scarcely have reached any one standing by the Chapel,
which stretched along the opposite side of the court. The laughter died out, and only gestures of arms,
movements of bodies, could be seen shaping something in the room. Was it an argument? A bet on the boat
races? Was it nothing of the sort? What was shaped by the arms and bodies moving in the twilight room?
A step or two beyond the window there was nothing at all, except the enclosing buildings−−chimneys upright,
roofs horizontal; too much brick and building for a May night, perhaps. And then before one's eyes would
come the bare hills of Turkey−−sharp lines, dry earth, coloured flowers, and colour on the shoulders of the
women, standing naked−legged in the stream to beat linen on the stones. The stream made loops of water
round their ankles. But none of that could show clearly through the swaddlings and blanketings of the
Cambridge night. The stroke of the clock even was muffled; as if intoned by somebody reverent from a pulpit;
as if generations of learned men heard the last hour go rolling through their ranks and issued it, already
smooth and time−worn, with their blessing, for the use of the living.
Was it to receive this gift from the past that the young man came to the window and stood there, looking out
across the court? It was Jacob. He stood smoking his pipe while the last stroke of the clock purred softly
round him. Perhaps there had been an argument. He looked satisfied; indeed masterly; which expression
changed slightly as he stood there, the sound of the clock conveying to him (it may be) a sense of old
buildings and time; and himself the inheritor; and then to−morrow; and friends; at the thought of whom, in
sheer confidence and pleasure, it seemed, he yawned and stretched himself.
Meanwhile behind him the shape they had made, whether by argument or not, the spiritual shape, hard yet
CHAPTER THREE 20
ephemeral, as of glass compared with the dark stone of the Chapel, was dashed to splinters, young men rising
from chairs and sofa corners, buzzing and barging about the room, one driving another against the bedroom
door, which giving way, in they fell. Then Jacob was left there, in the shallow arm−chair, alone with
Masham? Anderson? Simeon? Oh, it was Simeon. The others had all gone.
"... Julian the Apostate...." Which of them said that and the other words murmured round it? But about
midnight there sometimes rises, like a veiled figure suddenly woken, a heavy wind; and this now flapping
through Trinity lifted unseen leaves and blurred everything. "Julian the Apostate"−−and then the wind. Up go
the elm branches, out blow the sails, the old schooners rear and plunge, the grey waves in the hot Indian
Ocean tumble sultrily, and then all falls flat again.
So, if the veiled lady stepped through the Courts of Trinity, she now drowsed once more, all her draperies
about her, her head against a pillar.
"Somehow it seems to matter."
The low voice was Simeon's.
The voice was even lower that answered him. The sharp tap of a pipe on the mantelpiece cancelled the words.
And perhaps Jacob only said "hum," or said nothing at all. True, the words were inaudible. It was the
intimacy, a sort of spiritual suppleness, when mind prints upon mind indelibly.
"Well, you seem to have studied the subject," said Jacob, rising and standing over Simeon's chair. He
balanced himself; he swayed a little. He appeared extraordinarily happy, as if his pleasure would brim and
spill down the sides if Simeon spoke.
Simeon said nothing. Jacob remained standing. But intimacy−−the room was full of it, still, deep, like a pool.
Without need of movement or speech it rose softly and washed over everything, mollifying, kindling, and
coating the mind with the lustre of pearl, so that if you talk of a light, of Cambridge burning, it's not languages
only. It's Julian the Apostate.
But Jacob moved. He murmured good−night. He went out into the court. He buttoned his jacket across his
chest. He went back to his rooms, and being the only man who walked at that moment back to his rooms, his
footsteps rang out, his figure loomed large. Back from the Chapel, back from the Hall, back from the Library,
came the sound of his footsteps, as if the old stone echoed with magisterial authority: "The young man−− the
young man−−the young man−back to his rooms."

Chapter 4



What's the use of trying to read Shakespeare, especially in one of those little thin paper editions whose pages
get ruffled, or stuck together with sea−water? Although the plays of Shakespeare had frequently been praised,
even quoted, and placed higher than the Greek, never since they started had Jacob managed to read one
through. Yet what an opportunity!
For the Scilly Isles had been sighted by Timmy Durrant lying like mountain−tops almost a−wash in precisely
the right place. His calculations had worked perfectly, and really the sight of him sitting there, with his hand
on the tiller, rosy gilled, with a sprout of beard, looking sternly at the stars, then at a compass, spelling out
quite correctly his page of the eternal lesson−book, would have moved a woman. Jacob, of course, was not a
woman. The sight of Timmy Durrant was no sight for him, nothing to set against the sky and worship; far
from it. They had quarrelled. Why the right way to open a tin of beef, with Shakespeare on board, under
conditions of such splendour, should have turned them to sulky schoolboys, none can tell. Tinned beef is cold
eating, though; and salt water spoils biscuits; and the waves tumble and lollop much the same hour after
CHAPTER FOUR 21
hour−−tumble and lollop all across the horizon. Now a spray of seaweed floats past−now a log of wood. Ships
have been wrecked here. One or two go past, keeping their own side of the road. Timmy knew where they
were bound, what their cargoes were, and, by looking through his glass, could tell the name of the line, and
even guess what dividends it paid its shareholders. Yet that was no reason for Jacob to turn sulky.
The Scilly Isles had the look of mountain−tops almost a−wash.... Unfortunately, Jacob broke the pin of the
Primus stove.
The Scilly Isles might well be obliterated by a roller sweeping straight across.
But one must give young men the credit of admitting that, though breakfast eaten under these circumstances is
grim, it is sincere enough. No need to make conversation. They got out their pipes.
Timmy wrote up some scientific observations; and−−what was the question that broke the silence−−the exact
time or the day of the month? anyhow, it was spoken without the least awkwardness; in the most
matter−of−fact way in the world; and then Jacob began to unbutton his clothes and sat naked, save for his
shirt, intending, apparently, to bathe.
The Scilly Isles were turning bluish; and suddenly blue, purple, and green flushed the sea; left it grey; struck a
stripe which vanished; but when Jacob had got his shirt over his head the whole floor of the waves was blue
and white, rippling and crisp, though now and again a broad purple mark appeared, like a bruise; or there
floated an entire emerald tinged with yellow. He plunged. He gulped in water, spat it out, struck with his right
arm, struck with his left, was towed by a rope, gasped, splashed, and was hauled on board.
The seat in the boat was positively hot, and the sun warmed his back as he sat naked with a towel in his hand,
looking at the Scilly Isles which−−confound it! the sail flapped. Shakespeare was knocked overboard. There
you could see him floating merrily away, with all his pages ruffling innumerably; and then he went under.
Strangely enough, you could smell violets, or if violets were impossible in July, they must grow something
very pungent on the mainland then. The mainland, not so very far off−−you could see clefts in the cliffs, white
cottages, smoke going up−−wore an extraordinary look of calm, of sunny peace, as if wisdom and piety had
descended upon the dwellers there. Now a cry sounded, as of a man calling pilchards in a main street. It wore
an extraordinary look of piety and peace, as if old men smoked by the door, and girls stood, hands on hips, at
the well, and horses stood; as if the end of the world had come, and cabbage fields and stone walls, and
coast−guard stations, and, above all, the white sand bays with the waves breaking unseen by any one, rose to
heaven in a kind of ecstasy.
But imperceptibly the cottage smoke droops, has the look of a mourning emblem, a flag floating its caress
over a grave. The gulls, making their broad flight and then riding at peace, seem to mark the grave.
No doubt if this were Italy, Greece, or even the shores of Spain, sadness would be routed by strangeness and
excitement and the nudge of a classical education. But the Cornish hills have stark chimneys standing on
them; and, somehow or other, loveliness is infernally sad. Yes, the chimneys and the coast−guard stations and
the little bays with the waves breaking unseen by any one make one remember the overpowering sorrow. And
what can this sorrow be?
It is brewed by the earth itself. It comes from the houses on the coast. We start transparent, and then the cloud
thickens. All history backs our pane of glass. To escape is vain.
But whether this is the right interpretation of Jacob's gloom as he sat naked, in the sun, looking at the Land's
End, it is impossible to say; for he never spoke a word. Timmy sometimes wondered (only for a second)
whether his people bothered him.... No matter. There are things that can't be said. Let's shake it off. Let's dry
CHAPTER FOUR 22
ourselves, and take up the first thing that comes handy.... Timmy Durrant's notebook of scientific
observations.
"Now..." said Jacob.
It is a tremendous argument.
Some people can follow every step of the way, and even take a little one, six inches long, by themselves at the
end; others remain observant of the external signs.
The eyes fix themselves upon the poker; the right hand takes the poker and lifts it; turns it slowly round, and
then, very accurately, replaces it. The left hand, which lies on the knee, plays some stately but intermittent
piece of march music. A deep breath is taken; but allowed to evaporate unused. The cat marches across the
hearth−rug. No one observes her.
"That's about as near as I can get to it," Durrant wound up.
The next minute is quiet as the grave.
"It follows..." said Jacob.
Only half a sentence followed; but these half−sentences are like flags set on tops of buildings to the observer
of external sights down below. What was the coast of Cornwall, with its violet scents, and mourning emblems,
and tranquil piety, but a screen happening to hang straight behind as his mind marched up?
"It follows..." said Jacob.
"Yes," said Timmy, after reflection. "That is so."
Now Jacob began plunging about, half to stretch himself, half in a kind of jollity, no doubt, for the strangest
sound issued from his lips as he furled the sail, rubbed the plates−−gruff, tuneless−−a sort of pasan, for having
grasped the argument, for being master of the situation, sunburnt, unshaven, capable into the bargain of sailing
round the world in a ten−ton yacht, which, very likely, he would do one of these days instead of settling down
in a lawyer's office, and wearing spats.
"Our friend Masham," said Timmy Durrant, "would rather not be seen in our company as we are now." His
buttons had come off.
"D'you know Masham's aunt?" said Jacob.
"Never knew he had one," said Timmy.
"Masham has millions of aunts," said Jacob.
"Masham is mentioned in Domesday Book," said Timmy.
"So are his aunts," said Jacob.
"His sister," said Timmy, "is a very pretty girl."
"That's what'll happen to you, Timmy," said Jacob.
CHAPTER FOUR 23
"It'll happen to you first," said Timmy.
"But this woman I was telling you about−−Masham's aunt−−"
"Oh, do get on," said Timmy, for Jacob was laughing so much that he could not speak.
"Masham's aunt..."
Timmy laughed so much that he could not speak.
"Masham's aunt..."
"What is there about Masham that makes one laugh?" said Timmy.
"Hang it all−−a man who swallows his tie−pin," said Jacob.
"Lord Chancellor before he's fifty," said Timmy.
"He's a gentleman," said Jacob.
"The Duke of Wellington was a gentleman," said Timmy.
"Keats wasn't."
"Lord Salisbury was."
"And what about God?" said Jacob.
The Scilly Isles now appeared as if directly pointed at by a golden finger issuing from a cloud; and everybody
knows how portentous that sight is, and how these broad rays, whether they light upon the Scilly Isles or upon
the tombs of crusaders in cathedrals, always shake the very foundations of scepticism and lead to jokes about
God.
"Abide with me: Fast falls the eventide; The shadows deepen; Lord, with me abide,"
sang Timmy Durrant.
"At my place we used to have a hymn which began
Great God, what do I see and hear?"
said Jacob.
Gulls rode gently swaying in little companies of two or three quite near the boat; the cormorant, as if
following his long strained neck in eternal pursuit, skimmed an inch above the water to the next rock; and the
drone of the tide in the caves came across the water, low, monotonous, like the voice of some one talking to
himself.
"Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee,"
sang Jacob.
CHAPTER FOUR 24
Like the blunt tooth of some monster, a rock broke the surface; brown; overflown with perpetual waterfalls.
"Rock of Ages,"
Jacob sang, lying on his back, looking up into the sky at midday, from which every shred of cloud had been
withdrawn, so that it was like something permanently displayed with the cover off.
By six o'clock a breeze blew in off an icefield; and by seven the water was more purple than blue; and by
half−past seven there was a patch of rough gold−beater's skin round the Scilly Isles, and Durrant's face, as he
sat steering, was of the colour of a red lacquer box polished for generations. By nine all the fire and confusion
had gone out of the sky, leaving wedges of apple−green and plates of pale yellow; and by ten the lanterns on
the boat were making twisted colours upon the waves, elongated or squat, as the waves stretched or humped
themselves. The beam from the lighthouse strode rapidly across the water. Infinite millions of miles away
powdered stars twinkled; but the waves slapped the boat, and crashed, with regular and appalling solemnity,
against the rocks.
Although it would be possible to knock at the cottage door and ask for a glass of milk, it is only thirst that
would compel the intrusion. Yet perhaps Mrs. Pascoe would welcome it. The summer's day may be wearing
heavy. Washing in her little scullery, she may hear the cheap clock on the mantelpiece tick, tick, tick ... tick,
tick, tick. She is alone in the house. Her husband is out helping Farmer Hosken; her daughter married and
gone to America. Her elder son is married too, but she does not agree with his wife. The Wesleyan minister
came along and took the younger boy. She is alone in the house. A steamer, probably bound for Cardiff, now
crosses the horizon, while near at hand one bell of a foxglove swings to and fro with a bumble−bee for
clapper. These white Cornish cottages are built on the edge of the cliff; the garden grows gorse more readily
than cabbages; and for hedge, some primeval man has piled granite boulders. In one of these, to hold, an
historian conjectures, the victim's blood, a basin has been hollowed, but in our time it serves more tamely to
seat those tourists who wish for an uninterrupted view of the Gurnard's Head. Not that any one objects to a
blue print dress and a white apron in a cottage garden.
"Look−−she has to draw her water from a well in the garden."
"Very lonely it must be in winter, with the wind sweeping over those hills, and the waves dashing on the
rocks."
Even on a summer's day you hear them murmuring.
Having drawn her water, Mrs. Pascoe went in. The tourists regretted that they had brought no glasses, so that
they might have read the name of the tramp steamer. Indeed, it was such a fine day that there was no saying
what a pair of field−glasses might not have fetched into view. Two fishing luggers, presumably from St. Ives
Bay, were now sailing in an opposite direction from the steamer, and the floor of the sea became alternately
clear and opaque. As for the bee, having sucked its fill of honey, it visited the teasle and thence made a
straight line to Mrs. Pascoe's patch, once more directing the tourists' gaze to the old woman's print dress and
white apron, for she had come to the door of the cottage and was standing there.
There she stood, shading her eyes and looking out to sea.
For the millionth time, perhaps, she looked at the sea. A peacock butterfly now spread himself upon the teasle,
fresh and newly emerged, as the blue and chocolate down on his wings testified. Mrs. Pascoe went indoors,
fetched a cream pan, came out, and stood scouring it. Her face was assuredly not soft, sensual, or lecherous,
but hard, wise, wholesome rather, signifying in a room full of sophisticated people the flesh and blood of life.
She would tell a lie, though, as soon as the truth. Behind her on the wall hung a large dried skate. Shut up in
the parlour she prized mats, china mugs, and photographs, though the mouldy little room was saved from the
CHAPTER FOUR 25
salt breeze only by the depth of a brick, and between lace curtains you saw the gannet drop like a stone, and
on stormy days the gulls came shuddering through the air, and the steamers' lights were now high, now deep.
Melancholy were the sounds on a winter's night.
The picture papers were delivered punctually on Sunday, and she pored long over Lady Cynthia's wedding at
the Abbey. She, too, would have liked to ride in a carriage with springs. The soft, swift syllables of educated
speech often shamed her few rude ones. And then all night to hear the grinding of the Atlantic upon the rocks
instead of hansom cabs and footmen whistling for motor cars. ... So she may have dreamed, scouring her
cream pan. But the talkative, nimble−witted people have taken themselves to towns. Like a miser, she has
hoarded her feelings within her own breast. Not a penny piece has she changed all these years, and, watching
her enviously, it seems as if all within must be pure gold.
The wise old woman, having fixed her eyes upon the sea, once more withdrew. The tourists decided that it
was time to move on to the Gurnard's Head.
Three seconds later Mrs. Durrant rapped upon the door.
"Mrs. Pascoe?" she said.
Rather haughtily, she watched the tourists cross the field path. She came of a Highland race, famous for its
chieftains.
Mrs. Pascoe appeared.
"I envy you that bush, Mrs. Pascoe," said Mrs. Durrant, pointing the parasol with which she had rapped on the
door at the fine clump of St. John's wort that grew beside it. Mrs. Pascoe looked at the bush deprecatingly.
"I expect my son in a day or two," said Mrs. Durrant. "Sailing from Falmouth with a friend in a little boat. ...
Any news of Lizzie yet, Mrs. Pascoe?"
Her long−tailed ponies stood twitching their ears on the road twenty yards away. The boy, Curnow, flicked
flies off them occasionally. He saw his mistress go into the cottage; come out again; and pass, talking
energetically to judge by the movements of her hands, round the vegetable plot in front of the cottage. Mrs.
Pascoe was his aunt. Both women surveyed a bush. Mrs. Durrant stooped and picked a sprig from it. Next she
pointed (her movements were peremptory; she held herself very upright) at the potatoes. They had the blight.
All potatoes that year had the blight. Mrs. Durrant showed Mrs. Pascoe how bad the blight was on her
potatoes. Mrs. Durrant talked energetically; Mrs. Pascoe listened submissively. The boy Curnow knew that
Mrs. Durrant was saying that it is perfectly simple; you mix the powder in a gallon of water; "I have done it
with my own hands in my own garden," Mrs. Durrant was saying.
"You won't have a potato left−−you won't have a potato left," Mrs. Durrant was saying in her emphatic voice
as they reached the gate. The boy Curnow became as immobile as stone.
Mrs. Durrant took the reins in her hands and settled herself on the driver's seat.
"Take care of that leg, or I shall send the doctor to you," she called back over her shoulder; touched the
ponies; and the carriage started forward. The boy Curnow had only just time to swing himself up by the toe of
his boot. The boy Curnow, sitting in the middle of the back seat, looked at his aunt.
Mrs. Pascoe stood at the gate looking after them; stood at the gate till the trap was round the corner; stood at
the gate, looking now to the right, now to the left; then went back to her cottage.
CHAPTER FOUR 26
Soon the ponies attacked the swelling moor road with striving forelegs. Mrs. Durrant let the reins fall slackly,
and leant backwards. Her vivacity had left her. Her hawk nose was thin as a bleached bone through which you
almost see the light. Her hands, lying on the reins in her lap, were firm even in repose. The upper lip was cut
so short that it raised itself almost in a sneer from the front teeth. Her mind skimmed leagues where Mrs.
Pascoe's mind adhered to its solitary patch. Her mind skimmed leagues as the ponies climbed the hill road.
Forwards and backwards she cast her mind, as if the roofless cottages, mounds of slag, and cottage gardens
overgrown with foxglove and bramble cast shade upon her mind. Arrived at the summit, she stopped the
carriage. The pale hills were round her, each scattered with ancient stones; beneath was the sea, variable as a
southern sea; she herself sat there looking from hill to sea, upright, aquiline, equally poised between gloom
and laughter. Suddenly she flicked the ponies so that the boy Curnow had to swing himself up by the toe of
his boot.
The rooks settled; the rooks rose. The trees which they touched so capriciously seemed insufficient to lodge
their numbers. The tree−tops sang with the breeze in them; the branches creaked audibly and dropped now
and then, though the season was midsummer, husks or twigs. Up went the rooks and down again, rising in
lesser numbers each time as the sager birds made ready to settle, for the evening was already spent enough to
make the air inside the wood almost dark. The moss was soft; the tree−trunks spectral. Beyond them lay a
silvery meadow. The pampas grass raised its feathery spears from mounds of green at the end of the meadow.
A breadth of water gleamed. Already the convolvulus moth was spinning over the flowers. Orange and purple,
nasturtium and cherry pie, were washed into the twilight, but the tobacco plant and the passion flower, over
which the great moth spun, were white as china. The rooks creaked their wings together on the tree−tops, and
were settling down for sleep when, far off, a familiar sound shook and trembled−−increased −−fairly dinned
in their ears−−scared sleepy wings into the air again−− the dinner bell at the house.
After six days of salt wind, rain, and sun, Jacob Flanders had put on a dinner jacket. The discreet black object
had made its appearance now and then in the boat among tins, pickles, preserved meats, and as the voyage
went on had become more and more irrelevant, hardly to be believed in. And now, the world being stable, lit
by candle−light, the dinner jacket alone preserved him. He could not be sufficiently thankful. Even so his
neck, wrists, and face were exposed without cover, and his whole person, whether exposed or not, tingled and
glowed so as to make even black cloth an imperfect screen. He drew back the great red hand that lay on the
table−cloth. Surreptitiously it closed upon slim glasses and curved silver forks. The bones of the cutlets were
decorated with pink frills− and yesterday he had gnawn ham from the bone! Opposite him were hazy,
semi−transparent shapes of yellow and blue. Behind them, again, was the grey−green garden, and among the
pear−shaped leaves of the escallonia fishing−boats seemed caught and suspended. A sailing ship slowly drew
past the women's backs. Two or three figures crossed the terrace hastily in the dusk. The door opened and
shut. Nothing settled or stayed unbroken. Like oars rowing now this side, now that, were the sentences that
came now here, now there, from either side of the table.
"Oh, Clara, Clara!" exclaimed Mrs. Durrant, and Timothy Durrant adding, "Clara, Clara," Jacob named the
shape in yellow gauze Timothy's sister, Clara. The girl sat smiling and flushed. With her brother's dark eyes,
she was vaguer and softer than he was. When the laugh died down she said: "But, mother, it was true. He said
so, didn't he? Miss Eliot agreed with us. ..."
But Miss Eliot, tall, grey−headed, was making room beside her for the old man who had come in from the
terrace. The dinner would never end, Jacob thought, and he did not wish it to end, though the ship had sailed
from one corner of the window−frame to the other, and a light marked the end of the pier. He saw Mrs.
Durrant gaze at the light. She turned to him.
"Did you take command, or Timothy?" she said. "Forgive me if I call you Jacob. I've heard so much of you."
Then her eyes went back to the sea. Her eyes glazed as she looked at the view.
"A little village once," she said, "and now grown. ..." She rose, taking her napkin with her, and stood by the
CHAPTER FOUR 27
window.
"Did you quarrel with Timothy?" Clara asked shyly. "I should have."
Mrs. Durrant came back from the window.
"It gets later and later," she said, sitting upright, and looking down the table. "You ought to be ashamed−−all
of you. Mr. Clutterbuck, you ought to be ashamed." She raised her voice, for Mr. Clutterbuck was deaf.
"We ARE ashamed," said a girl. But the old man with the beard went on eating plum tart. Mrs. Durrant
laughed and leant back in her chair, as if indulging him.
"We put it to you, Mrs. Durrant," said a young man with thick spectacles and a fiery moustache. "I say the
conditions were fulfilled. She owes me a sovereign."
"Not BEFORE the fish−−with it, Mrs. Durrant," said Charlotte Wilding.
"That was the bet; with the fish," said Clara seriously. "Begonias, mother. To eat them with his fish."
"Oh dear," said Mrs. Durrant.
"Charlotte won't pay you," said Timothy.
"How dare you ..." said Charlotte.
"That privilege will be mine," said the courtly Mr. Wortley, producing a silver case primed with sovereigns
and slipping one coin on to the table. Then Mrs. Durrant got up and passed down the room, holding herself
very straight, and the girls in yellow and blue and silver gauze followed her, and elderly Miss Eliot in her
velvet; and a little rosy woman, hesitating at the door, clean, scrupulous, probably a governess. All passed out
at the open door.
"When you are as old as I am, Charlotte," said Mrs. Durrant, drawing the girl's arm within hers as they paced
up and down the terrace.
"Why are you so sad?" Charlotte asked impulsively.
"Do I seem to you sad? I hope not," said Mrs. Durrant.
"Well, just now. You're NOT old."
"Old enough to be Timothy's mother." They stopped.
Miss Eliot was looking through Mr. Clutterbuck's telescope at the edge of the terrace. The deaf old man stood
beside her, fondling his beard, and reciting the names of the constellations: "Andromeda, Bootes, Sidonia,
Cassiopeia. ..."
"Andromeda," murmured Miss Eliot, shifting the telescope slightly.
Mrs. Durrant and Charlotte looked along the barrel of the instrument pointed at the skies.
"There are MILLIONS of stars," said Charlotte with conviction. Miss Eliot turned away from the telescope.
The young men laughed suddenly in the dining−room.
CHAPTER FOUR 28
"Let ME look," said Charlotte eagerly.
"The stars bore me," said Mrs. Durrant, walking down the terrace with Julia Eliot. "I read a book once about
the stars. ... What are they saying?" She stopped in front of the dining−room window. "Timothy," she noted.
"The silent young man," said Miss Eliot.
"Yes, Jacob Flanders," said Mrs. Durrant.
"Oh, mother! I didn't recognize you!" exclaimed Clara Durrant, coming from the opposite direction with
Elsbeth. "How delicious," she breathed, crushing a verbena leaf.
Mrs. Durrant turned and walked away by herself.
"Clara!" she called. Clara went to her.
"How unlike they are!" said Miss Eliot.
Mr. Wortley passed them, smoking a cigar.
"Every day I live I find myself agreeing ..." he said as he passed them.
"It's so interesting to guess ..." murmured Julia Eliot.
"When first we came out we could see the flowers in that bed," said Elsbeth.
"We see very little now," said Miss Eliot.
"She must have been so beautiful, and everybody loved her, of course," said Charlotte. "I suppose Mr.
Wortley ..." she paused.
"Edward's death was a tragedy," said Miss Eliot decidedly.
Here Mr. Erskine joined them.
"There's no such thing as silence," he said positively. "I can hear twenty different sounds on a night like this
without counting your voices."
"Make a bet of it?" said Charlotte.
"Done," said Mr. Erskine. "One, the sea; two, the wind; three, a dog; four ..."
The others passed on.
"Poor Timothy," said Elsbeth.
"A very fine night," shouted Miss Eliot into Mr. Clutterbuck's ear.
"Like to look at the stars?" said the old man, turning the telescope towards Elsbeth.
"Doesn't it make you melancholy−−looking at the stars?" shouted Miss Eliot.
CHAPTER FOUR 29
"Dear me no, dear me no," Mr. Clutterbuck chuckled when he understood her. "Why should it make me
melancholy? Not for a moment−−dear me no."
"Thank you, Timothy, but I'm coming in," said Miss Eliot. "Elsbeth, here's a shawl."
"I'm coming in," Elsbeth murmured with her eye to the telescope. "Cassiopeia," she murmured. "Where are
you all?" she asked, taking her eye away from the telescope. "How dark it is!"
Mrs. Durrant sat in the drawing−room by a lamp winding a ball of wool. Mr. Clutterbuck read the Times. In
the distance stood a second lamp, and round it sat the young ladies, flashing scissors over silver−spangled
stuff for private theatricals. Mr. Wortley read a book.
"Yes; he is perfectly right," said Mrs. Durrant, drawing herself up and ceasing to wind her wool. And while
Mr. Clutterbuck read the rest of Lord Lansdowne's speech she sat upright, without touching her ball.
"Ah, Mr. Flanders," she said, speaking proudly, as if to Lord Lansdowne himself. Then she sighed and began
to wind her wool again.
"Sit THERE," she said.
Jacob came out from the dark place by the window where he had hovered. The light poured over him,
illuminating every cranny of his skin; but not a muscle of his face moved as he sat looking out into the garden.
"I want to hear about your voyage," said Mrs. Durrant.
"Yes," he said.
"Twenty years ago we did the same thing."
"Yes," he said. She looked at him sharply.
"He is extraordinarily awkward," she thought, noticing how he fingered his socks. "Yet so
distinguished−looking."
"In those days ..." she resumed, and told him how they had sailed ... "my husband, who knew a good deal
about sailing, for he kept a yacht before we married" ... and then how rashly they had defied the fishermen,
"almost paid for it with our lives, but so proud of ourselves!" She flung the hand out that held the ball of wool.
"Shall I hold your wool?" Jacob asked stiffly.
"You do that for your mother," said Mrs. Durrant, looking at him again keenly, as she transferred the skein.
"Yes, it goes much better."
He smiled; but said nothing.
Elsbeth Siddons hovered behind them with something silver on her arm.
"We want," she said. ... "I've come ..." she paused.
"Poor Jacob," said Mrs. Durrant, quietly, as if she had known him all his life. "They're going to make you act
in their play."
CHAPTER FOUR 30
"How I love you!" said Elsbeth, kneeling beside Mrs. Durrant's chair.
"Give me the wool," said Mrs. Durrant.
"He's come−−he's come!" cried Charlotte Wilding. "I've won my bet!"
"There's another bunch higher up," murmured Clara Durrant, mounting another step of the ladder. Jacob held
the ladder as she stretched out to reach the grapes high up on the vine.
"There!" she said, cutting through the stalk. She looked semi− transparent, pale, wonderfully beautiful up
there among the vine leaves and the yellow and purple bunches, the lights swimming over her in coloured
islands. Geraniums and begonias stood in pots along planks; tomatoes climbed the walls.
"The leaves really want thinning," she considered, and one green one, spread like the palm of a hand, circled
down past Jacob's head.
"I have more than I can eat already," he said, looking up.
"It does seem absurd ..." Clara began, "going back to London. ..."
"Ridiculous," said Jacob, firmly.
"Then ..." said Clara, "you must come next year, properly," she said, snipping another vine leaf, rather at
random.
"If ... if ..."
A child ran past the greenhouse shouting. Clara slowly descended the ladder with her basket of grapes.
"One bunch of white, and two of purple," she said, and she placed two great leaves over them where they lay
curled warm in the basket.
"I have enjoyed myself," said Jacob, looking down the greenhouse.
"Yes, it's been delightful," she said vaguely.
"Oh, Miss Durrant," he said, taking the basket of grapes; but she walked past him towards the door of the
greenhouse.
"You're too good−−too good," she thought, thinking of Jacob, thinking that he must not say that he loved her.
No, no, no.
The children were whirling past the door, throwing things high into the air.
"Little demons!" she cried. "What have they got?" she asked Jacob.
"Onions, I think," said Jacob. He looked at them without moving.
"Next August, remember, Jacob," said Mrs. Durrant, shaking hands with him on the terrace where the fuchsia
hung, like a scarlet ear−ring, behind her head. Mr. Wortley came out of the window in yellow slippers, trailing
the Times and holding out his hand very cordially.
CHAPTER FOUR 31
"Good−bye," said Jacob. "Good−bye," he repeated. "Good−bye," he said once more. Charlotte Wilding flung
up her bedroom window and cried out: "Good−bye, Mr. Jacob!"
"Mr. Flanders!" cried Mr. Clutterbuck, trying to extricate himself from his beehive chair. "Jacob Flanders!"
"Too late, Joseph," said Mrs. Durrant.
"Not to sit for me," said Miss Eliot, planting her tripod upon the lawn.

Chapter 5


"I rather think," said Jacob, taking his pipe from his mouth, "it's in Virgil," and pushing back his chair, he
went to the window.
The rashest drivers in the world are, certainly, the drivers of post− office vans. Swinging down Lamb's
Conduit Street, the scarlet van rounded the corner by the pillar box in such a way as to graze the kerb and
make the little girl who was standing on tiptoe to post a letter look up, half frightened, half curious. She
paused with her hand in the mouth of the box; then dropped her letter and ran away. It is seldom only that we
see a child on tiptoe with pity−−more often a dim discomfort, a grain of sand in the shoe which it's scarcely
worth while to remove−−that's our feeling, and so−−Jacob turned to the bookcase.
Long ago great people lived here, and coming back from Court past midnight stood, huddling their satin
skirts, under the carved door−posts while the footman roused himself from his mattress on the floor, hurriedly
fastened the lower buttons of his waistcoat, and let them in. The bitter eighteenth−century rain rushed down
the kennel. Southampton Row, however, is chiefly remarkable nowadays for the fact that you will always find
a man there trying to sell a tortoise to a tailor. "Showing off the tweed, sir; what the gentry wants is something
singular to catch the eye, sir−−and clean in their habits, sir!" So they display their tortoises.
At Mudie's corner in Oxford Street all the red and blue beads had run together on the string. The motor
omnibuses were locked. Mr. Spalding going to the city looked at Mr. Charles Budgeon bound for Shepherd's
Bush. The proximity of the omnibuses gave the outside passengers an opportunity to stare into each other's
faces. Yet few took advantage of it. Each had his own business to think of. Each had his past shut in him like
the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends could only read the title, James Spalding, or
Charles Budgeon, and the passengers going the opposite way could read nothing at all−−save "a man with a
red moustache," "a young man in grey smoking a pipe." The October sunlight rested upon all these men and
women sitting immobile; and little Johnnie Sturgeon took the chance to swing down the staircase, carrying his
large mysterious parcel, and so dodging a zigzag course between the wheels he reached the pavement, started
to whistle a tune and was soon out of sight−−for ever. The omnibuses jerked on, and every single person felt
relief at being a little nearer to his journey's end, though some cajoled themselves past the immediate
engagement by promise of indulgence beyond−−steak and kidney pudding, drink or a game of dominoes in
the smoky corner of a city restaurant. Oh yes, human life is very tolerable on the top of an omnibus in
Holborn, when the policeman holds up his arm and the sun beats on your back, and if there is such a thing as a
shell secreted by man to fit man himself here we find it, on the banks of the Thames, where the great streets
join and St. Paul's Cathedral, like the volute on the top of the snail shell, finishes it off. Jacob, getting off his
omnibus, loitered up the steps, consulted his watch, and finally made up his mind to go in. ... Does it need an
effort? Yes. These changes of mood wear us out.
Dim it is, haunted by ghosts of white marble, to whom the organ for ever chaunts. If a boot creaks, it's awful;
then the order; the discipline. The verger with his rod has life ironed out beneath him. Sweet and holy are the
angelic choristers. And for ever round the marble shoulders, in and out of the folded fingers, go the thin high
sounds of voice and organ. For ever requiem−−repose. Tired with scrubbing the steps of the Prudential
Society's office, which she did year in year out, Mrs. Lidgett took her seat beneath the great Duke's tomb,
CHAPTER FIVE 32
folded her hands, and half closed her eyes. A magnificent place for an old woman to rest in, by the very side
of the great Duke's bones, whose victories mean nothing to her, whose name she knows not, though she never
fails to greet the little angels opposite, as she passes out, wishing the like on her own tomb, for the leathern
curtain of the heart has flapped wide, and out steal on tiptoe thoughts of rest, sweet melodies. ... Old Spicer,
jute merchant, thought nothing of the kind though. Strangely enough he'd never been in St. Paul's these fifty
years, though his office windows looked on the churchyard. "So that's all? Well, a gloomy old place. ...
Where's Nelson's tomb? No time now−−come again−−a coin to leave in the box. ... Rain or fine is it? Well, if
it would only make up its mind!" Idly the children stray in−−the verger dissuades them−−and another and
another ... man, woman, man, woman, boy ... casting their eyes up, pursing their lips, the same shadow
brushing the same faces; the leathern curtain of the heart flaps wide.
Nothing could appear more certain from the steps of St. Paul's than that each person is miraculously provided
with coat, skirt, and boots; an income; an object. Only Jacob, carrying in his hand Finlay's Byzantine Empire,
which he had bought in Ludgate Hill, looked a little different; for in his hand he carried a book, which book
he would at nine−thirty precisely, by his own fireside, open and study, as no one else of all these multitudes
would do. They have no houses. The streets belong to them; the shops; the churches; theirs the innumerable
desks; the stretched office lights; the vans are theirs, and the railway slung high above the street. If you look
closer you will see that three elderly men at a little distance from each other run spiders along the pavement as
if the street were their parlour, and here, against the wall, a woman stares at nothing, boot−laces extended,
which she does not ask you to buy. The posters are theirs too; and the news on them. A town destroyed; a race
won. A homeless people, circling beneath the sky whose blue or white is held off by a ceiling cloth of steel
filings and horse dung shredded to dust.
There, under the green shade, with his head bent over white paper, Mr. Sibley transferred figures to folios, and
upon each desk you observe, like provender, a bunch of papers, the day's nutriment, slowly consumed by the
industrious pen. Innumerable overcoats of the quality prescribed hung empty all day in the corridors, but as
the clock struck six each was exactly filled, and the little figures, split apart into trousers or moulded into a
single thickness, jerked rapidly with angular forward motion along the pavement; then dropped into darkness.
Beneath the pavement, sunk in the earth, hollow drains lined with yellow light for ever conveyed them this
way and that, and large letters upon enamel plates represented in the underworld the parks, squares, and
circuses of the upper. "Marble Arch−−Shepherd's Bush"−−to the majority the Arch and the Bush are eternally
white letters upon a blue ground. Only at one point−−it may be Acton, Holloway, Kensal Rise, Caledonian
Road−−does the name mean shops where you buy things, and houses, in one of which, down to the right,
where the pollard trees grow out of the paving stones, there is a square curtained window, and a bedroom.
Long past sunset an old blind woman sat on a camp−stool with her back to the stone wall of the Union of
London and Smith's Bank, clasping a brown mongrel tight in her arms and singing out loud, not for coppers,
no, from the depths of her gay wild heart−−her sinful, tanned heart−−for the child who fetches her is the fruit
of sin, and should have been in bed, curtained, asleep, instead of hearing in the lamplight her mother's wild
song, where she sits against the Bank, singing not for coppers, with her dog against her breast.
Home they went. The grey church spires received them; the hoary city, old, sinful, and majestic. One behind
another, round or pointed, piercing the sky or massing themselves, like sailing ships, like granite cliffs, spires
and offices, wharves and factories crowd the bank; eternally the pilgrims trudge; barges rest in mid stream
heavy laden; as some believe, the city loves her prostitutes.
But few, it seems, are admitted to that degree. Of all the carriages that leave the arch of the Opera House, not
one turns eastward, and when the little thief is caught in the empty market−place no one in black− and−white
or rose−coloured evening dress blocks the way by pausing with a hand upon the carriage door to help or
condemn−−though Lady Charles, to do her justice, sighs sadly as she ascends her staircase, takes down
Thomas a Kempis, and does not sleep till her mind has lost itself tunnelling into the complexity of things.
"Why? Why? Why?" she sighs. On the whole it's best to walk back from the Opera House. Fatigue is the
CHAPTER FIVE 33
safest sleeping draught.
The autumn season was in full swing. Tristan was twitching his rug up under his armpits twice a week; Isolde
waved her scarf in miraculous sympathy with the conductor's baton. In all parts of the house were to be found
pink faces and glittering breasts. When a Royal hand attached to an invisible body slipped out and withdrew
the red and white bouquet reposing on the scarlet ledge, the Queen of England seemed a name worth dying
for. Beauty, in its hothouse variety (which is none of the worst), flowered in box after box; and though
nothing was said of profound importance, and though it is generally agreed that wit deserted beautiful lips
about the time that Walpole died−−at any rate when Victoria in her nightgown descended to meet her
ministers, the lips (through an opera glass) remained red, adorable. Bald distinguished men with gold−headed
canes strolled down the crimson avenues between the stalls, and only broke from intercourse with the boxes
when the lights went down, and the conductor, first bowing to the Queen, next to the bald−headed men, swept
round on his feet and raised his wand.
Then two thousand hearts in the semi−darkness remembered, anticipated, travelled dark labyrinths; and Clara
Durrant said farewell to Jacob Flanders, and tasted the sweetness of death in effigy; and Mrs. Durrant, sitting
behind her in the dark of the box, sighed her sharp sigh; and Mr. Wortley, shifting his position behind the
Italian Ambassador's wife, thought that Brangaena was a trifle hoarse; and suspended in the gallery many feet
above their heads, Edward Whittaker surreptitiously held a torch to his miniature score; and ... and ...
In short, the observer is choked with observations. Only to prevent us from being submerged by chaos, nature
and society between them have arranged a system of classification which is simplicity itself; stalls, boxes,
amphitheatre, gallery. The moulds are filled nightly. There is no need to distinguish details. But the difficulty
remains−−one has to choose. For though I have no wish to be Queen of England or only for a moment−−I
would willingly sit beside her; I would hear the Prime Minister's gossip; the countess whisper, and share her
memories of halls and gardens; the massive fronts of the respectable conceal after all their secret code; or why
so impermeable? And then, doffing one's own headpiece, how strange to assume for a moment some
one's−−any one's−−to be a man of valour who has ruled the Empire; to refer while Brangaena sings to the
fragments of Sophocles, or see in a flash, as the shepherd pipes his tune, bridges and aqueducts. But no−−we
must choose. Never was there a harsher necessity! or one which entails greater pain, more certain disaster; for
wherever I seat myself, I die in exile: Whittaker in his lodging−house; Lady Charles at the Manor.
A young man with a Wellington nose, who had occupied a seven−and− sixpenny seat, made his way down the
stone stairs when the opera ended, as if he were still set a little apart from his fellows by the influence of the
music.
At midnight Jacob Flanders heard a rap on his door.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed. "You're the very man I want!" and without more ado they discovered the lines
which he had been seeking all day; only they come not in Virgil, but in Lucretius.
"Yes; that should make him sit up," said Bonamy, as Jacob stopped reading. Jacob was excited. It was the first
time he had read his essay aloud.
"Damned swine!" he said, rather too extravagantly; but the praise had gone to his head. Professor Bulteel, of
Leeds, had issued an edition of Wycherley without stating that he had left out, disembowelled, or indicated
only by asterisks, several indecent words and some indecent phrases. An outrage, Jacob said; a breach of faith;
sheer prudery; token of a lewd mind and a disgusting nature. Aristophanes and Shakespeare were cited.
Modern life was repudiated. Great play was made with the professional title, and Leeds as a seat of learning
was laughed to scorn. And the extraordinary thing was that these young men were perfectly
right−−extraordinary, because, even as Jacob copied his pages, he knew that no one would ever print them;
and sure enough back they came from the Fortnightly, the Contemporary, the Nineteenth Century−− when
CHAPTER FIVE 34
Jacob threw them into the black wooden box where he kept his mother's letters, his old flannel trousers, and a
note or two with the Cornish postmark. The lid shut upon the truth.
This black wooden box, upon which his name was still legible in white paint, stood between the long
windows of the sitting−room. The street ran beneath. No doubt the bedroom was behind. The furniture−−three
wicker chairs and a gate−legged table−−came from Cambridge. These houses (Mrs. Garfit's daughter, Mrs.
Whitehorn, was the landlady of this one) were built, say, a hundred and fifty years ago. The rooms are
shapely, the ceilings high; over the doorway a rose, or a ram's skull, is carved in the wood. The eighteenth
century has its distinction. Even the panels, painted in raspberry−coloured paint, have their distinction. ...
"Distinction"−−Mrs. Durrant said that Jacob Flanders was "distinguished− looking." "Extremely awkward,"
she said, "but so distinguished−looking." Seeing him for the first time that no doubt is the word for him. Lying
back in his chair, taking his pipe from his lips, and saying to Bonamy: "About this opera now" (for they had
done with indecency). "This fellow Wagner" ... distinction was one of the words to use naturally, though,
from looking at him, one would have found it difficult to say which seat in the opera house was his, stalls,
gallery, or dress circle. A writer? He lacked self−consciousness. A painter? There was something in the shape
of his hands (he was descended on his mother's side from a family of the greatest antiquity and deepest
obscurity) which indicated taste. Then his mouth−−but surely, of all futile occupations this of cataloguing
features is the worst. One word is sufficient. But if one cannot find it?
"I like Jacob Flanders," wrote Clara Durrant in her diary. "He is so unworldly. He gives himself no airs, and
one can say what one likes to him, though he's frightening because ..." But Mr. Letts allows little space in his
shilling diaries. Clara was not the one to encroach upon Wednesday. Humblest, most candid of women! "No,
no, no," she sighed, standing at the greenhouse door, "don't break−−don't spoil"−−what? Something infinitely
wonderful.
But then, this is only a young woman's language, one, too, who loves, or refrains from loving. She wished the
moment to continue for ever precisely as it was that July morning. And moments don't. Now, for instance,
Jacob was telling a story about some walking tour he'd taken, and the inn was called "The Foaming Pot,"
which, considering the landlady's name ... They shouted with laughter. The joke was indecent.
Then Julia Eliot said "the silent young man," and as she dined with Prime Ministers, no doubt she meant: "If
he is going to get on in the world, he will have to find his tongue."
Timothy Durrant never made any comment at all.
The housemaid found herself very liberally rewarded.
Mr. Sopwith's opinion was as sentimental as Clara's, though far more skilfully expressed.
Betty Flanders was romantic about Archer and tender about John; she was unreasonably irritated by Jacob's
clumsiness in the house.
Captain Barfoot liked him best of the boys; but as for saying why ...
It seems then that men and women are equally at fault. It seems that a profound, impartial, and absolutely just
opinion of our fellow−creatures is utterly unknown. Either we are men, or we are women. Either we are cold,
or we are sentimental. Either we are young, or growing old. In any case life is but a procession of shadows,
and God knows why it is that we embrace them so eagerly, and see them depart with such anguish, being
shadows. And why, if this−−and much more than this is true, why are we yet surprised in the window corner
by a sudden vision that the young man in the chair is of all things in the world the most real, the most solid,
the best known to us−−why indeed? For the moment after we know nothing about him.
CHAPTER FIVE 35
Such is the manner of our seeing. Such the conditions of our love.
("I'm twenty−two. It's nearly the end of October. Life is thoroughly pleasant, although unfortunately there are
a great number of fools about. One must apply oneself to something or other−−God knows what. Everything
is really very jolly−−except getting up in the morning and wearing a tail coat.")
"I say, Bonamy, what about Beethoven?"
("Bonamy is an amazing fellow. He knows practically everything−−not more about English literature than I
do−−but then he's read all those Frenchmen.")
"I rather suspect you're talking rot, Bonamy. In spite of what you say, poor old Tennyson. ..."
("The truth is one ought to have been taught French. Now, I suppose, old Barfoot is talking to my mother.
That's an odd affair to be sure. But I can't see Bonamy down there. Damn London!") for the market carts were
lumbering down the street.
"What about a walk on Saturday?"
("What's happening on Saturday?")
Then, taking out his pocket−book, he assured himself that the night of the Durrants' party came next week.
But though all this may very well be true−−so Jacob thought and spoke−− so he crossed his legs−−filled his
pipe−−sipped his whisky, and once looked at his pocket−book, rumpling his hair as he did so, there remains
over something which can never be conveyed to a second person save by Jacob himself. Moreover, part of this
is not Jacob but Richard Bonamy−− the room; the market carts; the hour; the very moment of history. Then
consider the effect of sex−−how between man and woman it hangs wavy, tremulous, so that here's a valley,
there's a peak, when in truth, perhaps, all's as flat as my hand. Even the exact words get the wrong accent on
them. But something is always impelling one to hum vibrating, like the hawk moth, at the mouth of the cavern
of mystery, endowing Jacob Flanders with all sorts of qualities he had not at all−−for though, certainly, he sat
talking to Bonamy, half of what he said was too dull to repeat; much unintelligible (about unknown people
and Parliament); what remains is mostly a matter of guess work. Yet over him we hang vibrating.
"Yes," said Captain Barfoot, knocking out his pipe on Betty Flanders's hob, and buttoning his coat. "It doubles
the work, but I don't mind that."
He was now town councillor. They looked at the night, which was the same as the London night, only a good
deal more transparent. Church bells down in the town were striking eleven o'clock. The wind was off the sea.
And all the bedroom windows were dark−−the Pages were asleep; the Garfits were asleep; the Cranches were
asleep−−whereas in London at this hour they were burning Guy Fawkes on Parliament Hill.

Chapter 6


The flames had fairly caught.
"There's St. Paul's!" some one cried.
As the wood caught the city of London was lit up for a second; on other sides of the fire there were trees. Of
the faces which came out fresh and vivid as though painted in yellow and red, the most prominent was a girl's
face. By a trick of the firelight she seemed to have no body. The oval of the face and hair hung beside the fire
with a dark vacuum for background. As if dazed by the glare, her green−blue eyes stared at the flames. Every
CHAPTER SIX 36
muscle of her face was taut. There was something tragic in her thus staring−−her age between twenty and
twenty−five.
A hand descending from the chequered darkness thrust on her head the conical white hat of a pierrot. Shaking
her head, she still stared. A whiskered face appeared above her. They dropped two legs of a table upon the fire
and a scattering of twigs and leaves. All this blazed up and showed faces far back, round, pale, smooth,
bearded, some with billycock hats on; all intent; showed too St. Paul's floating on the uneven white mist, and
two or three narrow, paper−white, extinguisher−shaped spires.
The flames were struggling through the wood and roaring up when, goodness knows where from, pails flung
water in beautiful hollow shapes, as of polished tortoiseshell; flung again and again; until the hiss was like a
swarm of bees; and all the faces went out.
"Oh Jacob," said the girl, as they pounded up the hill in the dark, "I'm so frightfully unhappy!"
Shouts of laughter came from the others−−high, low; some before, others after.
The hotel dining−room was brightly lit. A stag's head in plaster was at one end of the table; at the other some
Roman bust blackened and reddened to represent Guy Fawkes, whose night it was. The diners were linked
together by lengths of paper roses, so that when it came to singing "Auld Lang Syne" with their hands crossed
a pink and yellow line rose and fell the entire length of the table. There was an enormous tapping of green
wine−glasses. A young man stood up, and Florinda, taking one of the purplish globes that lay on the table,
flung it straight at his head. It crushed to powder.
"I'm so frightfully unhappy!" she said, turning to Jacob, who sat beside her.
The table ran, as if on invisible legs, to the side of the room, and a barrel organ decorated with a red cloth and
two pots of paper flowers reeled out waltz music.
Jacob could not dance. He stood against the wall smoking a pipe.
"We think," said two of the dancers, breaking off from the rest, and bowing profoundly before him, "that you
are the most beautiful man we have ever seen."
So they wreathed his head with paper flowers. Then somebody brought out a white and gilt chair and made
him sit on it. As they passed, people hung glass grapes on his shoulders, until he looked like the figure−head
of a wrecked ship. Then Florinda got upon his knee and hid her face in his waistcoat. With one hand he held
her; with the other, his pipe.
"Now let us talk," said Jacob, as he walked down Haverstock Hill between four and five o'clock in the
morning of November the sixth arm−in−arm with Timmy Durrant, "about something sensible."
The Greeks−−yes, that was what they talked about−−how when all's said and done, when one's rinsed one's
mouth with every literature in the world, including Chinese and Russian (but these Slavs aren't civilized), it's
the flavour of Greek that remains. Durrant quoted Aeschylus−−Jacob Sophocles. It is true that no Greek could
have understood or professor refrained from pointing out−−Never mind; what is Greek for if not to be shouted
on Haverstock Hill in the dawn? Moreover, Durrant never listened to Sophocles, nor Jacob to Aeschylus.
They were boastful, triumphant; it seemed to both that they had read every book in the world; known every
sin, passion, and joy. Civilizations stood round them like flowers ready for picking. Ages lapped at their feet
like waves fit for sailing. And surveying all this, looming through the fog, the lamplight, the shades of
London, the two young men decided in favour of Greece.
CHAPTER SIX 37
"Probably," said Jacob, "we are the only people in the world who know what the Greeks meant."
They drank coffee at a stall where the urns were burnished and little lamps burnt along the counter.
Taking Jacob for a military gentleman, the stall−keeper told him about his boy at Gibraltar, and Jacob cursed
the British army and praised the Duke of Wellington. So on again they went down the hill talking about the
Greeks.
A strange thing−−when you come to think of it−−this love of Greek, flourishing in such obscurity, distorted,
discouraged, yet leaping out, all of a sudden, especially on leaving crowded rooms, or after a surfeit of print,
or when the moon floats among the waves of the hills, or in hollow, sallow, fruitless London days, like a
specific; a clean blade; always a miracle. Jacob knew no more Greek than served him to stumble through a
play. Of ancient history he knew nothing. However, as he tramped into London it seemed to him that they
were making the flagstones ring on the road to the Acropolis, and that if Socrates saw them coming he would
bestir himself and say "my fine fellows," for the whole sentiment of Athens was entirely after his heart; free,
venturesome, high−spirited. ... She had called him Jacob without asking his leave. She had sat upon his knee.
Thus did all good women in the days of the Greeks.
At this moment there shook out into the air a wavering, quavering, doleful lamentation which seemed to lack
strength to unfold itself, and yet flagged on; at the sound of which doors in back streets burst sullenly open;
workmen stumped forth.
Florinda was sick.
Mrs. Durrant, sleepless as usual, scored a mark by the side of certain lines in the Inferno.
Clara slept buried in her pillows; on her dressing−table dishevelled roses and a pair of long white gloves.
Still wearing the conical white hat of a pierrot, Florinda was sick.
The bedroom seemed fit for these catastrophes−−cheap, mustard−coloured, half attic, half studio, curiously
ornamented with silver paper stars, Welshwomen's hats, and rosaries pendent from the gas brackets. As for
Florinda's story, her name had been bestowed upon her by a painter who had wished it to signify that the
flower of her maidenhood was still unplucked. Be that as it may, she was without a surname, and for parents
had only the photograph of a tombstone beneath which, she said, her father lay buried. Sometimes she would
dwell upon the size of it, and rumour had it that Florinda's father had died from the growth of his bones which
nothing could stop; just as her mother enjoyed the confidence of a Royal master, and now and again Florinda
herself was a Princess, but chiefly when drunk. Thus deserted, pretty into the bargain, with tragic eyes and the
lips of a child, she talked more about virginity than women mostly do; and had lost it only the night before, or
cherished it beyond the heart in her breast, according to the man she talked to. But did she always talk to men?
No, she had her confidante: Mother Stuart. Stuart, as the lady would point out, is the name of a Royal house;
but what that signified, and what her business way, no one knew; only that Mrs. Stuart got postal orders every
Monday morning, kept a parrot, believed in the transmigration of souls, and could read the future in tea
leaves. Dirty lodging−house wallpaper she was behind the chastity of Florinda.
Now Florinda wept, and spent the day wandering the streets; stood at Chelsea watching the river swim past;
trailed along the shopping streets; opened her bag and powdered her cheeks in omnibuses; read love letters,
propping them against the milk pot in the A.B.C. shop; detected glass in the sugar bowl; accused the waitress
of wishing to poison her; declared that young men stared at her; and found herself towards evening slowly
sauntering down Jacob's street, when it struck her that she liked that man Jacob better than dirty Jews, and
sitting at his table (he was copying his essay upon the Ethics of Indecency), drew off her gloves and told him
how Mother Stuart had banged her on the head with the tea−cosy.
CHAPTER SIX 38
Jacob took her word for it that she was chaste. She prattled, sitting by the fireside, of famous painters. The
tomb of her father was mentioned. Wild and frail and beautiful she looked, and thus the women of the Greeks
were, Jacob thought; and this was life; and himself a man and Florinda chaste.
She left with one of Shelley's poems beneath her arm. Mrs. Stuart, she said, often talked of him.
Marvellous are the innocent. To believe that the girl herself transcends all lies (for Jacob was not such a fool
as to believe implicitly), to wonder enviously at the unanchored life−−his own seeming petted and even
cloistered in comparison−−to have at hand as sovereign specifics for all disorders of the soul Adonais and the
plays of Shakespeare; to figure out a comradeship all spirited on her side, protective on his, yet equal on both,
for women, thought Jacob, are just the same as men−−innocence such as this is marvellous enough, and
perhaps not so foolish after all.
For when Florinda got home that night she first washed her head; then ate chocolate creams; then opened
Shelley. True, she was horribly bored. What on earth was it ABOUT? She had to wager with herself that she
would turn the page before she ate another. In fact she slept. But then her day had been a long one, Mother
Stuart had thrown the tea−cosy;−−there are formidable sights in the streets, and though Florinda was ignorant
as an owl, and would never learn to read even her love letters correctly, still she had her feelings, liked some
men better than others, and was entirely at the beck and call of life. Whether or not she was a virgin seems a
matter of no importance whatever. Unless, indeed, it is the only thing of any importance at all.
Jacob was restless when she left him.
All night men and women seethed up and down the well−known beats. Late home−comers could see shadows
against the blinds even in the most respectable suburbs. Not a square in snow or fog lacked its amorous
couple. All plays turned on the same subject. Bullets went through heads in hotel bedrooms almost nightly on
that account. When the body escaped mutilation, seldom did the heart go to the grave unscarred. Little else
was talked of in theatres and popular novels. Yet we say it is a matter of no importance at all.
What with Shakespeare and Adonais, Mozart and Bishop Berkeley−−choose whom you like−−the fact is
concealed and the evenings for most of us pass reputably, or with only the sort of tremor that a snake makes
sliding through the grass. But then concealment by itself distracts the mind from the print and the sound. If
Florinda had had a mind, she might have read with clearer eyes than we can. She and her sort have solved the
question by turning it to a trifle of washing the hands nightly before going to bed, the only difficulty being
whether you prefer your water hot or cold, which being settled, the mind can go about its business unassailed.
But it did occur to Jacob, half−way through dinner, to wonder whether she had a mind.
They sat at a little table in the restaurant.
Florinda leant the points of her elbows on the table and held her chin in the cup of her hands. Her cloak had
slipped behind her. Gold and white with bright beads on her she emerged, her face flowering from her body,
innocent, scarcely tinted, the eyes gazing frankly about her, or slowly settling on Jacob and resting there. She
talked:
"You know that big black box the Australian left in my room ever so long ago? ... I do think furs make a
woman look old. ... That's Bechstein come in now. ... I was wondering what you looked like when you were a
little boy, Jacob." She nibbled her roll and looked at him.
"Jacob. You're like one of those statues. ... I think there are lovely things in the British Museum, don't you?
Lots of lovely things ..." she spoke dreamily. The room was filling; the heat increasing. Talk in a restaurant is
dazed sleep−walkers' talk, so many things to look at−−so much noise−−other people talking. Can one
CHAPTER SIX 39
overhear? Oh, but they mustn't overhear US.
"That's like Ellen Nagle−−that girl ..." and so on.
"I'm awfully happy since I've known you, Jacob. You're such a GOOD man."
The room got fuller and fuller; talk louder; knives more clattering.
"Well, you see what makes her say things like that is ..."
She stopped. So did every one.
"To−morrow ... Sunday ... a beastly ... you tell me ... go then!" Crash! And out she swept.
It was at the table next them that the voice spun higher and higher. Suddenly the woman dashed the plates to
the floor. The man was left there. Everybody stared. Then−−"Well, poor chap, we mustn't sit staring. What a
go! Did you hear what she said? By God, he looks a fool! Didn't come up to the scratch, I suppose. All the
mustard on the tablecloth. The waiters laughing."
Jacob observed Florinda. In her face there seemed to him something horribly brainless−−as she sat staring.
Out she swept, the black woman with the dancing feather in her hat.
Yet she had to go somewhere. The night is not a tumultuous black ocean in which you sink or sail as a star. As
a matter of fact it was a wet November night. The lamps of Soho made large greasy spots of light upon the
pavement. The by−streets were dark enough to shelter man or woman leaning against the doorways. One
detached herself as Jacob and Florinda approached.
"She's dropped her glove," said Florinda.
Jacob, pressing forward, gave it her.
Effusively she thanked him; retraced her steps; dropped her glove again. But why? For whom? Meanwhile,
where had the other woman got to? And the man?
The street lamps do not carry far enough to tell us. The voices, angry, lustful, despairing, passionate, were
scarcely more than the voices of caged beasts at night. Only they are not caged, nor beasts. Stop a man; ask
him the way; he'll tell it you; but one's afraid to ask him the way. What does one fear?−−the human eye. At
once the pavement narrows, the chasm deepens. There! They've melted into it−−both man and woman.
Further on, blatantly advertising its meritorious solidity, a boarding− house exhibits behind uncurtained
windows its testimony to the soundness of London. There they sit, plainly illuminated, dressed like ladies and
gentlemen, in bamboo chairs. The widows of business men prove laboriously that they are related to judges.
The wives of coal merchants instantly retort that their fathers kept coachmen. A servant brings coffee, and the
crochet basket has to be moved. And so on again into the dark, passing a girl here for sale, or there an old
woman with only matches to offer, passing the crowd from the Tube station, the women with veiled hair,
passing at length no one but shut doors, carved door− posts, and a solitary policeman, Jacob, with Florinda on
his arm, reached his room and, lighting the lamp, said nothing at all.
"I don't like you when you look like that," said Florinda.
The problem is insoluble. The body is harnessed to a brain. Beauty goes hand in hand with stupidity. There
she sat staring at the fire as she had stared at the broken mustard−pot. In spite of defending indecency, Jacob
CHAPTER SIX 40
doubted whether he liked it in the raw. He had a violent reversion towards male society, cloistered rooms, and
the works of the classics; and was ready to turn with wrath upon whoever it was who had fashioned life thus.
Then Florinda laid her hand upon his knee.
After all, it was none of her fault. But the thought saddened him. It's not catastrophes, murders, deaths,
diseases, that age and kill us; it's the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.
Any excuse, though, serves a stupid woman. He told her his head ached.
But when she looked at him, dumbly, half−guessing, half−understanding, apologizing perhaps, anyhow saying
as he had said, "It's none of my fault," straight and beautiful in body, her face like a shell within its cap, then
he knew that cloisters and classics are no use whatever. The problem is insoluble.