The Indian summer stretched out through October that year. The closing harmonies were so complete that the gardens of the earth seemed but to repeat and enrich the gardens of the sky; and a day like a sunflower broadened to a sunset full of dahlias and late roses; with clouds above them massed, burnished and edged with bloom like the foliage of the trees of earth. Slowly at night the chill mists, bitter-sweet in smell, luminous beneath the moon, crept over and blotted all out.
The weeks drifted on. College became a pleasant habit. Lecturers ceased to be oracles. Work ceased to be important. Young men stared in lecture rooms and streets. There grew the consciousness of fundamental masculine apartness: ofthe other sex mysteriously calling to and avoiding it across an impassable gulf. Bookshops became places in which to wander and browse whole mornings. Towards the town, back from the town, the long road stretched out daily between the flat ploughed fields: the immense and crushing arc of the sky was swept forever with rich changes.
And the buildings,—the fall of sunlight and shadow on grey stone, red stone, the unblurred design of roofs and walls at dusk,—the buildings lifted their bulk, unfolded their pattern, glowed upon the mind by day and by night, breaking in upon essays, disturbing time-papers.
Jennifer’s shining head, curved cheek, lifted white throat lay against the blue curtain, just beyond the lamplight. Very late she sat there and said nothing, did nothing; made you lift eyes from the page, watch her, dream, wait for her smile to answer yours.
The garden, the river, the children next door were far away. Sometimes when you listened, there was nothing to be heard, not even Roddy; sometimes the bird-calls, the wet green scatters of buds, the flowering cherry-tree; sometimes the sunny mown lawn in stripes, the red rambler clouds heavy on the hot wall; sometimes the mists, the bloom on the clouds, the fallen yellow leaves in the dew; sometimes the rooks rocking in the blown treetops, the strong dark bewildering pattern of bare branches swirling across the sky, the tragic light crying out for a moment at sunset, haggard through torn clouds, then drowned again: sometimes these moved in their seasons through the garden so faintly behind your shut eyes they stirred no pang. Sometimes the silent group waiting in the darkness by the river had vanished as if they had been childish things put away.
Time flowed imperceptibly, casting up trifles here and there upon its banks.
King’s Chapel at Evensong. The coloured windows faded gradually out: only a twilight blue was left beneaththe roof: and that died too. Then, only the double rows of candle-flames gave light, pointing and floating above the immemorial shadows of the floor and the shadows of benches and the shadowed faces of old men and youths. Hushed prayer echoed; and the long rolling organ-waves rose and fell, half-drowning the singing and setting it free again. All was muffled, flickering, submerged deep under cloudy water. Jennifer sat there motionless, wistful-eyed and unconscious, neither kneeling nor standing with others, but leaning rigidly back with eyes fixed and brilliant.
And afterwards came the emerging into a strange town swallowed up in mist. White surprising faces glimmered and vanished under the lamps. The buildings loomed formlessly in the dense sky, picked out by dimly-lit windows, and forlorn lanterns in the gateways. The life of Cambridge was thickly enshrouded; but under the folds you felt it stir more buoyantly than ever, with sudden laughter and talk dropping from the windows, weighing oddly in the air: as if the town were encouraging her children to sleep by drawing the curtain; while they, very lively at bedtime, went on playing behind it.
The lecture room window-pane was full of treetops—a whirl and sweep of black twigs on the sky. The room swam and shone in a faint translucent flood; and a bird called on three wild enquiring notes. These skies of February twilights had primroses in them, and floods; and with the primroses, a thought of green.
The small creakings, breathings and shufflings of the lecture room went on. The men: rows of heads of young looking hair; bored restless shoulders hunched beneath their gowns; sprawling grey flannel legs. The women: attentive rather anxious faces under their injudicious hats; well-behaved backs; hands writing, writing. Clods, all of them, stones, worse than senseless things.
The lecturer thought smoothly aloud, not caring who besides himself listened to him.
It was a situation meet for one of those paragraphic poems beginning
“The solemn greybeard lecturer drones on;â€
“The solemn greybeard lecturer drones on;â€
“The solemn greybeard lecturer drones on;â€
“The solemn greybeard lecturer drones on;â€
and after a few more lines of subtly satirical description some dots and a fresh start:
“Sudden a blackbird calls.... Ah sweet! Who heeds?â€
“Sudden a blackbird calls.... Ah sweet! Who heeds?â€
“Sudden a blackbird calls.... Ah sweet! Who heeds?â€
“Sudden a blackbird calls.... Ah sweet! Who heeds?â€
No one heeds. Attention to greybeards has made everyone insensible to blackbirds. The conclusion would develop neatly along those lines.
A year or two ago, how fervently you would have written, how complacently desired to publish that sort of thing! No regret could be quite so sickly as that with which one wished out of existence the published record of last year’s errors of taste.
‘My dear, he’s the sort of person who’dmake arrangementsto have his juvenilia published after his death.’
That was the sort of condemnatory label Tony and his friends would attach, spreading their hands, leaving it at that.
‘Oh, Roddy, where are you? Why do you never come?’
He flashed into mind,—leaning idly against the mantelpiece, listening with an obscure smile to Tony’s conversation.
It was the sort of evening on which anything might happen. Excitement took her suddenly by the throat and made her feeble and tingling to her finger-tips.
The last of the light fell lingeringly on the grey stone window-frame. If the gold bloom lasted till you counted fifty, it would be a good omen. One, two, three, four and so on to twenty, thirty, forty ... crushing the temptationto count faster than her own heartbeats ... forty-five ... fifty.
It was still there, vanishing softly, but with a margin of at least another twenty to spare.
The ecstasy grew, making her stomach feel drained and helpless and beating in odd pulses all over her.
She bent over the desk, pretending to write, and making shaky pencil marks.
Somebody got up and switched on the light; and all at once darkness had fallen outside, and the window-pane was a purple-blue blank.
Roddy was in Tony’s room, leaning against the mantelpiece, quite near. She would pass Tony’s staircase on her way out: it was the one in the corner, facing the Chapel. She had seen his name every time she went by. Once she had met him coming out of the doorway, and he had looked through her; and once as she passed, someone in the court had shouted ‘Tony’! and he had leaned from his high window to reply.
Oh, this intolerable lecture!
Suddenly it was over. She came out and saw the bulk of King’s Chapel in the deep twilight with its row of buttresses rising up pale, like giant ghosts.
‘Oh, I’ve left my essay behind in the lecture room. I must go back. Don’t wait for me.’
She went back a few steps until the gloom had swallowed them, and waited alone in the dark court. There was a light in Tony’s window. Lingeringly she crept towards it and paused beneath it, stroking the wall. She lifted her head and cried speechlessly: ‘Oh come! Come!’
Nobody came and looked out through the uncurtained pane. Nobody came running down the stairs.
And if she did not go on quickly the bus would start without her.
Let it start and then walk up and knock on Tony’s door and say quite simply:
“I’ve missed my bus, so I’ve come to see Roddy.†Roddy would spring forward to greet her. All would be made right with Tony.
For a moment that seemed the clear, delightful inevitable solution.
But what would their faces hide from her or betray? What unbearable amusement, suspicion, astonishment, contempt?
And what was there to do on such a night save to say to Roddy: “I love you,†and then go away again? To dare everything, run to him and cry:
I am Lazarus come from the dead,Come back to tell you all, I will tell you all.
I am Lazarus come from the dead,Come back to tell you all, I will tell you all.
I am Lazarus come from the dead,Come back to tell you all, I will tell you all.
I am Lazarus come from the dead,Come back to tell you all, I will tell you all.
But what if he should answer with that disastrous answer:
That is not what I meant at all,That is not it, at all.
That is not what I meant at all,That is not it, at all.
That is not what I meant at all,That is not it, at all.
That is not what I meant at all,That is not it, at all.
If he were to stare and coldly reply, with real speech:
‘Are you mad?’
Oh, but it should be risked!...
She stood still, hesitating, her hand pressing the wall, power and intoxication dying out of her. She felt the night cold and damp, and heard approaching footsteps, a torn fragment of laughter, a male voice raised for a moment in the distance.
She looked up once more at Tony’s window and saw that the curtains had been drawn; and she sprang away from the wall and ran towards the street in urgent flight from her wound, from the deliberate-seeming insult, the cruelty of drawn curtains.
The college bus was packed with girls. Heads were craning out in search of her.
‘Oh, Judy! There you are! We’ve been keeping the bus and keeping it. What on earth happened to you?’
‘I couldn’t get in. The room was locked. And then—Oh dear, I’ve run so! Is there room for me?’
‘Yes, here. Come on, Judy. Here. Come and sit down. You’re all out of breath. Come in.’
They welcomed her. Their little voices and gestures seemed to stroke and pat. They were so glad she had come in time, so considerate and kindly, so safe.
The bus rolled through the streets, past where the solemn lamps and the buildings ended, out on to the road where was only the enveloping night wind. The bus swayed and the rows of bodies swayed and the faces smiled faintly across at each other, amused at their own shaking and jerking; but all half-dreaming, half-hypnotized by the noise and the motion; all warm, languid, silent.
The noise and the motion and the swaying faces seemed eternal. Nothing else had ever been, would ever be. Of course Roddy had not been there: he had never been there at all.
Martin was a great athlete. He was always rowing, always training; but once or twice he borrowed a motor-bicycle and came out to tea, when Judith and Jennifer gave combined tea-parties to young men. On these occasions his face was very red and he looked too big for the room. He was quite silent and stared with concentration at Judith and Jennifer alternately; and seemed not to take to his fellow guests. He was undoubtedly a heavy young man to have at a tea-party—a bad mixer. Jennifer’s jokes, oaths and sallies brought no gleam to his countenance, and Jennifer was bored with him. Impossible to convince her that Martin was not a dull young man.
Martin dull?...
God-like in form he dived from the raft and swam over the river, swiftly, with laughter, water and sun upon his face. He sat among them all and smoked his pipe, looking kindly and comforting. You could depend on his eyes solicitously watching, his smile inviting you to come in, when all the others, neither kindly nor comforting, had shut the door and gone away. He was the one to whom Mariella chattered at her ease and made little childish jokes, calling him‘darlin’,’ looking at him with candour and affection, sometimes even with a glint of mischief, as if she were a girl like any other girl; as if that something never fell across her clear face and obscured it. He shared a bedroom with Roddy; had a little screen at home, so he said, which Roddy had decorated, and given to him; he came walking up garden-paths with Roddy laughing and talking at his side.
In the darkness under the cherry-tree he bent his head and tried to speak, twisting his scrap of cherry, trembling with enchantment. He had been a thing to fly from, surprised, with beating heart.
But when Jennifer said he was a dull young man, it was very difficult to argue with her; for it seemed almost as if, transplanted alone to this new world, he were indeed quite dull, rather ordinary.
He came to tea three times. The last time Judith went with him down the stairs—his deliberate, assured masculine tread sounding significant, almost alarming in that house of flustered uneven foolish-sounding steps—and said good-night to him at the front door.
Fumbling with the lamps of his motor-bicycle he said:
‘Why can’t one ever see you alone?’
‘It’s not allowed, Martin. I can’t ask you to tea alone. And I can’t come to your rooms without a chaperon.’
‘Oh, damn the chaperon. I shan’t ask you to tea at all. Can’t you break a footling rule for anybody you know as well as me?’
She said deprecatingly that it was impossible.
‘You mean you won’t.’
That was what she meant. It was not worth while to break rules for dull Martin.
‘Who’s that Jennifer person you’re always with?’
‘A person I’m very fond of——’ She flared at his tone.
‘Never see you anywhere without her,’ he muttered.
‘Well you needn’t come to tea with me.’
‘Oh, I shan’t come again.’
‘I shan’t ask you.’
Silence fell. She looked up at the dark and starless sky; then at him still adjusting lamps, his head averted.
What were they about, parting in anger? How far indeed they were from the other world to mistrust and misunderstand so obstinately they had to quarrel!
Her heart misgave her suddenly at sight of the great building looming above her: there was no security in it, no kindness. Supposing when she went back Jennifer’s room were empty, and Jennifer, utterly weary of her, had taken the chance to escape, and were even now knocking at strangers’ doors, sure of her welcome?... How quickly without that form, that voice, all would crumble and dissolve and be but a lightless confusion! She should never have left the places where Martin stood by her side, listening, watching, waiting everywhere to wrap her in safety.
She said softly:
‘Martin, when’s Roddy coming to see you?’
‘He was here,’ said Martin, ‘a week or two ago. Staying with Tony Baring,’ he added. And then again: ‘Only for a night or two.’
Then finally trying in great embarrassment to soothe the pain which, even to his ears, cried out terribly in the silence and could not find words to cover it:
‘I scarcely saw him myself. He was very busy—so many people to see. He’ll be up again soon, I expect and then we must have a party.’
‘Oh yes, Martin.... You know, it’s very naughty of him. He said he’d come and see me.’
Her voice was thin and cheerful.
‘He’s very forgetful,’ said Martin helplessly.
‘I suppose,’ she suggested lightly, ‘he forgot even to ask after me.’
‘Oh no, he asked after you. I’m sure he did.’
She laughed.
‘Well I must go in.... Tell him when you write to him.... No, don’t tell him anything. But, Martin, you must come and see me sometimes, please,please,—in thishateful place. I feel I shall lose you all again. You know mother’s going to live abroad for a year or two? So I shan’t be there in the summer, next door. It’s awful. She let the house without telling me. What shall I do without it? Please come and see me. Or listen, I tell you what: it doesn’t seem to work somehow, your coming here. I can’t talk to you and I feel I don’t know you; but when the days get longer we’ll go for a long walk together, miles and miles. Shall we? Remember!’
‘Rather!’
He was happy again.
She called after him:
‘And, Martin, I’m sorry I was cross.’
‘My fault,’ came his ringing cheerful voice; and his engine started and he departed with a roar and a rush.
Alone in the dark she stood still and contemplated the appalling image of Roddy risen up again, mockingly asserting that only he was real; that his power to give himself or withhold himself was as the power of life and death.
It was urgent, now, to find Jennifer quickly. She was in her room, lying on the floor, staring at the flicker of firelight over her yellow velvet frock.
‘Oh, Jennifer!’
Judith sank down beside her, burying her face in her lap.
‘Darling.’
‘I’m not very happy to-night. It’s a mood. I think I don’t feel very well. And the night seems so sad and uneasy, with this wind. Don’t you feel it?’
Jennifer put out her hands and clasped them round Judith’s face, gazing at her sombrely.
‘What has he said to you?’ she whispered.
‘Who?’
‘That Martin.’
‘Nothing. It’s nothing to do with him.’
‘You love somebody, I think. Who is it you love?’
‘I love nobody.’
Jennifer must never never know, suspect, dream for a moment....
‘You mustn’t love anybody,’ said Jennifer. ‘I should want to kill him. I should be jealous.’ Her brooding eyes fell heavily on Judith’s lifted face. ‘I love you.’
And at those words, that look, Roddy faded again harmlessly: Jennifer blinded and enfolded her senses once more, and only Jennifer had power.
When the longer days came and Martin wrote to ask her to come for a walk one Sunday, she had another engagement and regretfully refused; and after that he wrote to tell her to bring a friend to a river picnic with him and another young man. She brought Jennifer; and Jennifer flirted broadly with the other young man; and the picnic was not a success.
After that the year closed without sight or sign of him; and she forgot to care.
Gradually Judith and Jennifer drew around them an outer circle of about half a dozen; and these gathered for conversation in Jennifer’s room every evening. That untidy luxuriant room, flickering with firelight, smelling of oranges and chrysanthemums, was always tacitly chosen as a meeting-place; for something of the magnetism of its owner seemed to be diffused in it, spreading a glow, drawing tired heads and bodies there to be refreshed.
Late into the night they sat about or lay on the floor, smoked, drank cocoa, ate buns, discussed—earnestly, muddle-headedly—sex, philosophy, religion, sociology, people and politics; then people and sex again. Judith sat in a corner and watched the firelight caress and beautify their peaceful serious faces; talked a great deal suddenly now and then, and then was silent again, dreaming and wondering.
Even the most placid and commonplace faces looked tragic,staring into the fire, lit by its light alone. They were all unconscious; and she herself could never be unconscious. Around her were these faces, far away and lost from themselves, brooding on nothing; and there was she, as usual, spectator and commentator, watching them over-curiously, ready to pounce on a passing light, a flitting shade of expression, to ponder and compare and surmise; whispering to herself: ‘Here am I watching, listening. Here are faces, forms, rooms with their own life, noise of wind and footsteps, light and shadow. What is this mystery?...’ And even in her futile thoughts never quite stepping over the edge and staring mindlessly and being wholly unaware.
They broke up at last with sighs and yawns, lingered, drifted away little by little. Judith was left alone with Jennifer.
‘One more cigarette,’ she suggested.
‘Well, just one.’
Jennifer let down her hair and brushed it out, holding it along her arm, watching it shimmer in the fire-light with an engrossed stare, as if she never could believe it was part of her.
Always Jennifer. It was impossible to drink up enough of her; and a day without her was a day with the light gone.
Jennifer coming into a room and pausing on the threshold, head up, eyes wide open, darting round, dissatisfied until they found you. That was an ever fresh spring of secret happiness. Jennifer lifting you in her arms and carrying you upstairs, because she said you looked tired and were such a baby and too lovely anyway to walk upstairs like other people.
Jennifer basking in popularity, drawing them all to her with a smile and a turn of the head, doing no work, breaking every rule, threatened with disgrace, plunged in despair; emerging the next moment new-bathed in radiance, oblivious of storm and stress.
Jennifer dispensing her hospitality with prodigal and careless ease, recklessly generous in public and in secret, flashingthe glow of her magnetism suddenly into unlit and neglected lives, allowing them to get warm for a little, and then light-heartedly forgetting them. But never forgetting Judith—or not for long; and coming back always to sit with her alone, and drop all masks and love her silently, watchfully with her eyes.
Jennifer singing Neapolitan folk-songs to a be-ribboned guitar. Where she had picked up the airs, the language, the grace and fascination of her manner, no one knew. But when she sat by the window with bright streamers falling over her lap, singing low to her soft accompaniment, then, each time, everyone fell madly in love with her.
Jennifer chattering most when she was tired, or depressed, her words tripping over each other, her absurd wit sparkling, her laugh frequent and excited: so silent, so still when she was happy that she seemed hypnotized, her whole consciousness suspended to allow the happiness to flow in.
Jennifer looking shattered, tortured after a few hours spent by mistake over coachings and time-papers in stuffy rooms; starting up in the end with a muttered: “O God, this place!...†wrenching open the door and rushing downstairs, oblivious of all but the urgency of her mood. From the window you could see her in the grounds, running, running. Soon the trees hid her. She was tramping over the ploughed fields, her cheeks glowing, her hair like a light against the dark hedges. She was going, alone, tensely, over the long fields. What was she thinking of? She had her evasions. No good to ask her: her eyes would fly off, hiding from you. She would not let herself be known entirely.
By Judith’s shadowy side ran the hurrying flame of Jennifer; and from all that might give her pause, or cloud her for a moment Jennifer fled as if she were afraid.
The lonely midnight clouded her. Jennifer was afraid of the dark.
Was it that people had the day and the night in them,mixed in varying quantities? Jennifer had the strength of day, and you the strength of night. By day, your little glow was merged in her radiance; but the night was stronger, and overcame her. You were stronger than Jennifer in spite of the burning life in her. The light hid the things for which you searched, but the darkness and the silence revealed them. All your significant experiences had been of the night. And there, it was suddenly clear, was the secret of the bond with Roddy. He too had more shadow in him than sun. “Chevalier de la lune†that was he—“Que la lumiere importuneâ€â€”ah! yes! “Qui cherche le coin noirâ€â€”yes, yes—“Qui cherche le coin noir.†Some time—it did not matter when, for it was bound to happen—he would say in the dark “I love you.â€
Meanwhile there was Jennifer to be loved with a bitter maternal love, because she was afraid. And because, some day, she might be gone. For Jennifer said “I love you†and fled away. You cried “Come back!†and she heard and returned in anguish, clasping you close but dreading your dependence. One day when you most needed her, she might run away out of earshot, and never come back.
But there was value in impermanence, in insecurity; it meant an ache and quickening, a perpetual birth; it meant you could never drift into complacence and acceptance and grow old.
There was Mabel, drifting into Judith’s life when conscience pricked and being joyfully dismissed again when the exigencies of duty seemed satisfied. There were little notes from Mabel found, with a sinking feeling, among her letters.
Dear J.,Would you care to come to church with me on Sunday? I shall be ready at 10.15. I do hope you will come this week.Yrs.M.F.
Dear J.,
Would you care to come to church with me on Sunday? I shall be ready at 10.15. I do hope you will come this week.
Yrs.M.F.
Dear Judith,I thought you did not look quite yourself at lunch to-day. If there is anything worrying you, perhaps I might help you? Or if you are tired, come and rest in my armchair. I shall be working and will not disturb you.Yours Mabel.P.S. It’s allthis rushingabout thatwears you outand makes youunfitfor work.M.F.
Dear Judith,
I thought you did not look quite yourself at lunch to-day. If there is anything worrying you, perhaps I might help you? Or if you are tired, come and rest in my armchair. I shall be working and will not disturb you.
Yours Mabel.
P.S. It’s allthis rushingabout thatwears you outand makes youunfitfor work.
M.F.
Mabel wrote her advice now, more often than she dared speak it.
Mabel, always pathetic, so that you could never entirely disregard her; always grotesque and untouched by charm so that it was impossible to think of her or look at her without revulsion; so that the whole thing was a tedious and barren self-discipline.
Mabel little by little relinquishing the effort to draw Judith into her life and desperately endeavoring to fit herself into Judith’s: chattering to other girls, trying to be amused by their jokes, to share their enthusiasms and illusions; pretending to have a gay home-life, full of interesting friends and fun; pretending to laugh at the thought of work and to treat lightly that nightmare of the Tripos which crushed her to the earth.
Once or twice Judith tried to draw her into the evening circle, explaining her loneliness, appealing beforehand for her pathos.... But it was no good. She was of another order of beings,—dreary and unadaptable. And Jennifer, with a wicked light in her eye, spoke loudly and with malicious irreverence of dons, the clergy and the Bible; and mentioned the body with light-hearted frankness; and Judith felt ashamed of herself for thinking Jennifer funny.
Mabel striving doggedly to believe that Jennifer was in the nature of an illness from which Judith would recover by careful treatment, then striving to ignore the importance ofthe relationship—staking out an exclusive claim in Judith by references suggestive of a protective intimacy.
‘Now, now! Pale cheeks! What will your mother say, I’d like to know, if I let you go home looking like this? I shall have to come and put you to bed myself.’
And there followed the flush and the hungry gleam while awkwardly she touched Judith’s cheek.
Mabel at long last voluntarily dropping out of all the places into which she had tried to force herself, going back without a word to her solitary room and her doughnuts. There were no more little notes rearing unwelcome heads in the letter-box. She asked nothing.
From the window late at night Judith could see her lamp staring with a tense wan hopeless eye across the court. In the midst of talk and laughter with Jennifer, she saw it suddenly and knew that Mabel was sitting alone, hunched over note-books and dictionaries, breathing stertorously through her nose hour after hour, dimly hoping that her uncurtained window might attract Judith’s attention, persuade her to look in and say good-night.
‘Oh, Jennifer, I won’t be five minutes. I must just go and see Mabel. It’s awful. You don’t know. She expects me; and she’ll sit up all night working if I don’t go.’
‘Tell her about the young lady of Bute with my love and a kiss,’ said Jennifer in the loud voice edged with brutality which she reserved for Mabel. ‘And say the mistress is very disappointed in her because she’s discovered she doesn’t wear corsets. She’s going to speak about it publicly to-morrow night because it’s very immoral. And ask her whatwillher mother say if you let her go home with all those spots on her face.’
Judith escaped, laughing, ran down the dark stairs to Mabel’s room and tapped.
‘Come in.’
It was clear from her voice she had been alert at the sound of the known footsteps. She raised a pallid face that triedfor a moment to begrudge its gladness and preserve a stiffness.
‘Now, Mabel, I’m come to put you to bed. I like all your talk of looking afterme. It’s you who need it. What do you suppose you’ll feel like to-morrow if you work any more? Come on now.’
That was the way she loved to be talked to. Judith filled her hot-water bottle and made cocoa, while with laborious modesty she donned her flannel nightdress with its feather-stitched collar; and pouted coyly and happily, like any other girl, because Judith was such a dragon.
Then she leaned back in her chair with the work-lines in her face smoothing out, and yawned contentedly and talked of little intimate things, giving them to Judith without reserve, as Judith gave hers to Jennifer—suddenly, pitifully like any other girl.
These were her happy compensating moments: they made her think for a while that the friendship was rare and firm.
How easy it was, thought Judith, to permit her to enjoy your incongruous presence; to step right into her world and close the gates on your own so fast that no chill air from it might breathe against her security! Alone with her like this, no lapse of taste on her part ruffled the nerves. You accepted her and let her reveal herself; and she was, after all, interesting, human, gentle, and simple. There was nothing—this time you must remember—nothing grotesque or ridiculous to report to Jennifer afterwards, hatefully betraying and mocking....
She spoke of her life in the narrow church-bound village home; her future: she would teach, and so have her own little independent place in the world. She didn’t think she was the marrying sort; but you never knew. Independence was what she craved: to support herself and be beholden to no one. Only she must pass well: (and her eyes would wander haggardly to the books)—It all depended on her health—she’d never enjoyed very good health. She always thought if she felt better she wouldn’t forget so. It made work veryhard. Freda had always been the strong one. Everything came easy to Freda. Everyone admired and petted her: she was getting so spoilt, and extravagant too. She wouldn’t go so far as to say she and Freda had much in common, but you couldn’t help but love her in spite of all her naughtiness. And the quick way she had of answering back! She recited some of Freda’s quick answers, giggling like any other girl.
There was a curate who had coached her in Greek and Latin. He was a wonderful man, a real saint: not like any one else at all, young, a beautiful face and such eyes. Once he had come to tea with her, and they had had a wonderful talk, just the two of them. Freda had been out. It really seemed as if he looked on her as a friend. She hoped so.... He had helped her.
Judith listened, asked questions, sympathized, cheered her with offers of notes and essays; tucked her into bed with an effort at motherliness; and flew with a light heart back to Jennifer.
The curate ... at all costs, she mustnottell Jennifer about the curate.
The long days of May stretched out before Judith and Jennifer. Each day was a fresh adventure in the open air, and work an unimportant and neglected nuisance. For weeks the weather remained flawless. Life narrowed to a wandering in a green canoe up small river-channels far from the town, with Jennifer paddling in wild bursts between long periods of inaction. To all Judith’s offers of help she answered firmly that a woman should never depart from her type.
They landed finally and made ready to bathe.
‘Off, off, you lendings!’ cried Jennifer. ‘Do you know, darling, that comes home to me more than anything else in all Shakespeare? I swear, Judith, it seems much more natural to me to wear no clothes.’
She stood up, stretching white arms above her head. Hercloud of hair was vivid in the blue air. Her back was slender and strong and faultlessly moulded.
‘Glorious, glorious Pagan that I adore!’ whispered the voice in Judith that could never speak out.
Beside Jennifer she felt herself too slim, too flexible, almost attenuated.
‘You are so utterly lovely,’ Jennifer said, watching her.
They swam in cool water in a deep circular pool swept round with willows, and dried themselves in the sun.
They spent the afternoon in the shade of a blossoming may bush. All round them the new green of the fields was matted over with a rich and solid layer of buttercup yellow. Jennifer lay flat on her back with the utter relaxed immobility of an animal, replenishing her vitality through every nerve.
Slowly they opened books, dreamed through a page, forgot it at once, laid books aside; turned to smile at each other, to talk as if there could never be enough of talking; with excitement, with anxiety, as if to-morrow might part them and leave them for ever burdened with the weight of all they had had to tell each other.
Judith crept closer, warming every sense at her, silent and utterly peaceful. She was the part of you which you never had been able to untie and set free, the part that wanted to dance and run and sing, taking strong draughts of wind and sunlight; and was, instead, done up in intricate knots and overcast with shadows; the part that longed to look outward and laugh, accepting life as an easy exciting thing; and yet was checked by a voice that said doubtfully that there were dark ideas behind it all, tangling the web; and turned you inward to grope among the roots of thought and feeling for the threads.
You could not do without Jennifer now.
The sun sank, and the level light flooded the fields and the river. Now the landscape lost its bright pure definitions of outline, its look as of a picture embroidered in brilliant silks, and veiled its colours with a uniform pearl-like glow. Achill fell and the scent of May grew troubling in the stillness. They turned the canoe towards home.
Nearer the town, boats became more frequent. Gramophones clamoured from the bowels of most of them; and they were heavily charged with grey-flannelled youth. Jennifer, observing them with frank interest, pointed out the good-looking ones in a loud whisper; and all of them stared, stared as they passed.
Above the quiet secretly-stirring town, roofs, towers and spires floated in a pale gold wash of light. What was the mystery of Cambridge in the evening? Footfalls struck with a pang on the heart, faces startled with strange beauty, and every far appearing or disappearing form seemed significant.
And when they got back to College, even that solid red-brick barrack was touched with mystery. The corridors were long patterns of unreal light and shadow. Girls’ voices sounded remote as in a dream, with a murmuring rise and fall and light laughter behind closed doors. The thrilling smell of cowslips and wall-flowers was everywhere, like a cloud of enchantment.
In Jennifer’s room, someone had let down the sun-blind, and all was in throbbing shadow. Her great copper bowl was piled, as usual, with fruit, and they ate of it idly, without hunger.
‘Now a little work,’ said Judith firmly. ‘Think! only three weeks till Mays....’
But it was impossible to feel moved.
Jennifer, looking childish and despondent, sat down silently by the window with a book.
Judith wrote on a sheet of paper:
Tall oaks branch-charmèd by the earnest stars; and studied it. Thatwasa starry night: the sound of the syllables made stars prick out in dark treetops.
Under it she wrote:
... the foamOf perilous seas in faëry lands forlorn.
... the foamOf perilous seas in faëry lands forlorn.
... the foamOf perilous seas in faëry lands forlorn.
... the foamOf perilous seas in faëry lands forlorn.
What a lot there were for the sea and the seashore!... The page became fuller.
Upon the desolate verge of lightYearned loud the iron-bosomed sea.The unplumbed salt estranging sea.From the lone sheiling of the misty islandMountains divide us and a world of seas:But still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland;And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.
Upon the desolate verge of lightYearned loud the iron-bosomed sea.The unplumbed salt estranging sea.From the lone sheiling of the misty islandMountains divide us and a world of seas:But still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland;And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.
Upon the desolate verge of lightYearned loud the iron-bosomed sea.The unplumbed salt estranging sea.From the lone sheiling of the misty islandMountains divide us and a world of seas:But still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland;And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.
Upon the desolate verge of lightYearned loud the iron-bosomed sea.The unplumbed salt estranging sea.From the lone sheiling of the misty islandMountains divide us and a world of seas:But still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland;And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.
Ah, that said it all....
The lines came flocking at random.
But the majestic river floated on,Out of the mist and hum of that low landInto the frosty starlight, and there flowedRejoicing through the hushed Chorasmian wasteUnder the solitary moon....Ah sunflower weary of timeThat countest the steps of the sun....
But the majestic river floated on,Out of the mist and hum of that low landInto the frosty starlight, and there flowedRejoicing through the hushed Chorasmian wasteUnder the solitary moon....Ah sunflower weary of timeThat countest the steps of the sun....
But the majestic river floated on,Out of the mist and hum of that low landInto the frosty starlight, and there flowedRejoicing through the hushed Chorasmian wasteUnder the solitary moon....Ah sunflower weary of timeThat countest the steps of the sun....
But the majestic river floated on,Out of the mist and hum of that low landInto the frosty starlight, and there flowedRejoicing through the hushed Chorasmian wasteUnder the solitary moon....
Ah sunflower weary of timeThat countest the steps of the sun....
Ah sunflower!... Where were they—the old gardens of the sun where my sunflower wished to go? They half unfolded themselves at the words ...
Nous n’irons plux aux boisLes lauriers sont coupés.
Nous n’irons plux aux boisLes lauriers sont coupés.
Nous n’irons plux aux boisLes lauriers sont coupés.
Nous n’irons plux aux boisLes lauriers sont coupés.
O mors quam amara est memoria tua homini pacem habenti in substantiis suis....
How with one tongue those both cried alas!And then in the end, sleep and a timeless peace.
How with one tongue those both cried alas!And then in the end, sleep and a timeless peace.
How with one tongue those both cried alas!And then in the end, sleep and a timeless peace.
Nox est perpetua una dormienda.
There were so many tumbling and leaping about in your head you could go on for ever....
Now to study them. What did it all mean? Was there any thread running through them with which to make a theory? Anybody could write down strings of quotations,—but a student of English literature was expected to deal in theories. It was something to do with the sound ... the way sound made images, shell within shell of them softly unclosing ... the way words became colours and scents ... and the surprise when it happened, the ache of desire, the surge of excitement, the sense of fulfilment, the momentary perception of something unknowable.... Some sort of truth, some answer to the question: What is poetry?... No it was no good. But it had been very enjoyable, writing things down like that and repeating them to yourself.
Jennifer was half asleep with her head upon the window-sill. The bowl of fruit burned in the dimness. How like Jennifer was her room! Yellow painted chairs, a red and blue rug on the hearth, cowslips in coloured bowls and jars, one branch of white lilac in a tall blue vase; the guitar with its many ribbons lying on the table; a silken Italian shawl, embroidered with great rose and blue and yellow flowers flung over the screen: wherever you looked colour leapt up at you; she threw colour about in profuse disorder and left it. Her hat of pale green straw with its little wreath of clover lay on the floor. Nobody else had attractive childish hats like hers. A wide green straw would remind you of Jennifer to the end of your life; and beneath it you would see the full delicious curve of her cheek and chin, her deep-shadowed eyes, her lips that seemed to hold all life in their ardent lines.
She turned her head and smiled sleepily.
‘Hullo!’ said Judith. ‘Haven’t we been quiet? I’ve done such a lot of work.’
‘I’ve done none. I couldn’t remember the difference between ethics and æsthetics. What rot it all is!... Now listen and we’ll hear a nightingale. He’s tuning up.’
They leaned out of the window.
The icy aching flute in the cedar called and called on two or three notes, uncertain, dissatisfied; then all at once found itself and bubbled over in rich and complicated rapture.
Jennifer was listening, tranced in her strange immobility, as if every other sense were suspended to allow her to hear aright.
She roused herself at last as Judith bent to kiss her good night.
‘Good night my—darling—darling—’ she said.
They stared at each other with tragic faces. It was too much, this happiness and beauty.
The end of the first year.
The next moment so it seemed, the soft and coloured Autumn days were there again; the corridors, the echoing steps, the vast female yell of voices in Hall, the sense of teeming life in all the little rooms, behind the little closed doors—all these started again to weave their strange timeless dream; and the second year had begun.
Midway through the term came Martin’s letter.