I
Judith, looking dazed, shut the door of the mistress’s room behind her,
and after a quarter of an hour’s wandering, found her way back to her
own room. She sat on a hard chair and said to herself: Independence at
last. This is Life. Life at last is beginning; but rather because it
seemed so much more like a painful death than because she believed it.
She surveyed the four walls in which her independence was to flower.
They were papered in sage green with perpendicular garlands of white and
yellow rosebuds. There was a desk, a kitchen chair, a cane table, a
narrow iron bedstead behind a faded buff curtain; and a distinctive
carpet. It was of a greenish-brown shade, striped round the edge with
yellow and tomato-colour, and patterned over with black liquorice-like
wriggles.
‘But I can’t _live_ in ugliness....’
A clamorous bell roused her from a state of apathetic despair; and she
opened her door and crept along in the wake of the click of heels and
the laughter of many voices.
This was Hall--huge, bare, full of echoes and hard light, whiteness and
cold blue curtains ... blue and high like twilight above ice and snow
when the full moon is rising.
‘I can always think of that and not mind if nobody talks to me....’
Down one wall, a row of black frocks and white aprons at attention; at
the top of the room, High Table beginning to fill up: black garments,
grey, close-brushed intellectual heads, serious thin faces looking down
the room, one young one, drooping a little: piles of chestnut hair and a
white Peter Pan collar. Crowds of dresses of all colours, shapes and
sizes, all running about briskly, knowing where to go; a sea of faces
bobbing and turning, chattering, bright-eyed, nodding and laughing to
other faces, sure of themselves.
‘Margaret, come and sit here ... here ... here! Next to me! Sylvia, next
to me.... Is there a place for Sylvia?...’
‘I am lost, lost, abandoned, alone, lost,’ thought Judith wildly and
pounced for the nearest chair and clung to it. She was between two girls
who stared at her, then looked away again. She bowed her head: the old
terror of faces engulfed her.
There fell a silence. A voice like a bell went through the room,
calling: _Benedictus, benedicat_. And then came a roar,--a scraping, an
immense yelling that rose to the ceiling and there rolled, broke,
swelled again without pause. Beneath its volumes she felt herself lost
again; but nobody else appeared to have noticed it.
‘Can I pass you the salt?’ said her neighbour.
‘After you,’ said Judith earnestly.
‘Thanks.’
The conversation swirled on around her.
‘Who d’you think’s engaged? Three guesses.... Let’s look at the
tombstone. Soup....... how classically simple ... just soup.... Take a
hundred dirty dishcloths, soak them in hot water, add a few onions....
Dorothy’s bobbed her hair. It suits her. It doesn’t suit her.... My
dear, who _is_ that girl next to you?... I’ve done six hours every day
this vac.... May you be forgiven.... Well anyway, four regularly.... I’m
going to _work_ this term, seven hours solid, no dances.... I’ve got to
... you should have heard the jawing I got from Miss Marsh because I
only got a third in Part I.... Well I think that was jolly good: I shall
think myself jolly lucky if I get the same.... Old Marsh has lost every
human instinct.... D’you know Sibyl Jones has done ten hours every day
for two months?... She’s _bound_ to collapse.... Third years ought to be
more sensible at their age.... I _say_, I _do_ believe Miss Ingram’s
dyed her hair. I’m _sure_ it’s a different colour.... D’you suppose
she’s in _love_?... I knew a girl at Oxford who overworked most
fearfully, and she woke up one morning and every hair on her head had
come off and was lying on the pillow beside her, looking like a nasty
practical joke. Rather a jar, wasn’t it? But she took to a wig, my
dears, a flaxen waved wig and it was such an improvement that she left
off her glasses and became quite flighty and took to powdering her nose
as well, so it was a blessing in disguise; and then her Maths coach
proposed to her and they got married, and all I wonder is whether he got
a shock or whether she’d warned him, because I s’pose she takes it off
at night and she’s as bald as an egg without it; but I suppose anyway
baldness doesn’t matter in true love.... It’s a warning isn’t it?’
‘Pleasant idiocy,’ said Judith very quietly in the yell of laughter that
followed. ‘Idiotic pleasantry.’
‘Did you speak?’ said the girl on her other side.
‘N--no.’
‘I suppose you’ve come up for a little visit? I wonder whose guest?...’
‘No, no. I’ve come up for good--I’ve just arrived. I came up a day late.
I----’
‘You mean you’re a fresher?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you’re at the wrong table!’ said the girl, horrified. ‘There’s your
table at the other end of the room. This is a second year table.’
‘Oh, dear! How awful! Does it matter? I couldn’t recognize anybody and
nobody told me anything.... I don’t know a soul....’ She felt the
shameful tears coming. Such a bad beginning....
‘Never mind,’ said the girl almost kindly. ‘It doesn’t matter for once.
And you’ll soon get to know people. Isn’t there anyone here from your
school?’
‘I’ve never been to school. This is the first time I’ve ever been away
from home....’ Stupid weakening thing to say, inducing self-pity,
bringing more tears.
‘Oh, really?’ said the girl, and added politely after a pause:
‘Do you know Cambridge?’
‘A bit. I came once with Da--my father. He simply adored it. He was
always coming back. That’s why he wanted me to----’
‘Oh, really? How naice. I expect he’ll often be running up to see you
then, won’t he?’
She turned her head away in silence. Never, never would he be running up
to see her, to rescue her. Why had she mentioned him? He had vanished
and left her stranded among creatures who dared to assume he was still
alive....
Trips. Labs. Lectures. Dons. Vacs. Chaperons. The voices gabbled on. The
forks clattered. The roof echoed.
‘Ugly and noisy,’ muttered Judith. ‘Ugly and noisy and crude and
smelly....’ You could go on for ever.
There were eyes staring from everywhere, necks craning to look at
her....
‘But I can abstract myself. I can ignore their rudeness....’
It was the moonlight filling the blue that made it so cold and pure.
Above the icefields and the snow lay the cold translucent pastures of
the air....
She studied the row of faces opposite her, and then more rows, and more,
of faces. Nearly all plain, nearly all with a touch of beauty: here and
there well-cut heads, broad white placid brows; young necks; white teeth
set in pleasant smiles; innocent intelligent lovely eyes. Accepting,
revealing faces they were, with no reserves in them, looking at each
other, at things--not inward at themselves. But just a herd, when all
was said: immature, untidy, all dull, and all alike, commonplace female
creatures in the mass. But boring it was! If you could see Mariella’s
clear thorough-bred face among them,--would that too get merged?
That was where she should be humbly sitting, among those quieter heads,
right at the end. There was a light there, flashing about: the tail of
her eye had already caught it several times. She looked more closely. It
was somebody’s fair head, so fiercely alive that it seemed delicately to
light the air around it: a vivacious emphatic head, turning and nodding;
below it a white neck and shoulder, generously modelled, leaned across
the table. Then the face came round suddenly, all curves, the wide mouth
laughing, warm-coloured.... It made you think of warm fruit,--peaches
and nectarines mellowed in the sun. It seemed to look at Judith with
sudden eager attention and then to smile. The eyes were meeting her own,
inquiring deeply.
‘Who’s that?’ said Judith excitedly, forgetful of her position.
‘Oh, one of the freshers. I don’t know her name.’
Her name, her very name would be sure to have the sun on it.
All at once Judith found courage to eat her pudding.
Another scraping of chairs, and they were all on their feet. Someone,
highly flushed, flew to the door at the edge of the däis and wrenched it
open, holding it back while the Mighty streamed slowly out. They were
gone. The girl returned, even more highly flushed.
‘My dears! _Do_ you think they saw me giggling? Bunny, you _were_ a
beast to make me giggle! Did I do it all right? I thought I’d never get
it open in time. Miss Thompson looked _so_ severe: but did you see what
a sweet smile I got from Miss Ingram? Oh, what an experience! Hold me up
someone.’
Willing hands supported her limp form. The roar broke out again, pouring
out of Hall along the corridors.
Judith went back to her room and sat by the window. Outside, the dusk
was chill and deep. The treetops were all round her window. It was like
being in a nest, to sit here with all the highest boughs swirling round
the pane. If only the corridors did not echo with high voices and
strange feet, if only you could forget the carpet, if only you could
turn round and see Martin--(not Roddy--he was too unreal a memory to
bring consolation) it might be possible to be comforted.
The feet were less frequent now, the voices quieter. What were the
mysterious animals doing? The vast building was full of them, streaming
in and out of their burrows, busy with their strange separate affairs.
Night, dropping across the flat fields of Cambridgeshire had blotted out
a dim west slashed with fire. The tree trunks threw up their branches in
a stiff black net and caught a few stars.
Now shut your eyes and see the garden at home, the summer sun wildly
rich on the lawn, hear the hot whirr and pause of the mowing machine;
smell the mown grass mixed with the smell of roses and pinks and
lavender; see the white butterflies dancing above the herbaceous border;
see Mamma, going slowly up the steps with a basket of sweet peas, pause
and draw up the striped Venetian blind; because now it is evening; the
sun is behind the massed, toppling dark-green luxuriance of the unmoving
chestnut trees, has drained its last ray out of the rooms and left them
warm, throbbing and wan. Now it is night. Go down to the river: they are
all there, waiting in the dark for you.... Now there is only Roddy,
coming close, just touching your shoulder, his head bent to look into
your lifted one. Listen and hear him say: “Darling” ... of course it had
been in fun. But his rich voice goes on whispering and repeating it....
His eyes drown again and again with yours....
Then all at once a far train-whistle roused her, cutting across this
immense strangeness with a suggestion of ordinary familiar things; and
Judith, faint with homesickness, sent towards it the desire of all her
being to fly in its wake back to the life she knew....
Impossible to stay in this room. She opened the door and wandered down
the corridor. At the far end was a great chatter of voices through a
half-open door. Peering in she saw a cloud of cigarette smoke and a room
full of girls sprawling in chairs and on the floor.
‘Who’s captain of hockey? Jane, of course you’re going to play hockey?
And lacrosse.... Jane, I must say it’s topping to see you again....
Jane, your year looks a dull lot.... Who’s the one who planted herself
at our table?... Oh, d’you think so? She’s got such a haughty expression
... sort of superior.... Perhaps she’s shy....’ A clear voice, high and
extraordinarily resonant cut in. ‘She’s the most beautiful person I ever
saw. I adore her.... Have some toffee someone.’
Judith half-saw half-imagined the flash of a head under the lamp as she
fled past. If that voice ... that voice had the sun in it?
She went on downstairs, looked for the fifth time in the box labelled E
for letters addressed to herself, knew for the fifth time there could be
none, and went on again, wandering among the ground-floor corridors;
desired in sudden panic to get back to her room and found she had lost
her way.
A girl came out of a door carrying a hot water can. She wore a pink
flannel dressing-gown.
‘Could you tell me,’ asked Judith. ‘How to get to a corridor called C?’
The girl looked at her closely and then beamed behind her glasses.
‘Oh, Miss Earle! Of course! We were up together for Scholarship Exams.
Come in.’
Judith, helplessly conscious that this unpleasant dream was becoming a
definite nightmare, followed her.
‘Sit down,’ said the girl. ‘I’m so glad you came to find me. You
remember my name--Mabel Fuller.’
O God! The creature thought she had been singled out for the purpose of
soliciting friendship....
‘I am so very glad you came to see me. I dare say you feel very
strange?’
‘A little. But I’m quite all right, thank you.’
‘One feels very lonely at first. Never mind. Do you know any one else?
No, nor do I.’ Her eyes glinted. ‘We must stick together till we’ve got
our bearings. It’s a great thing to--I had a friend here once. She said
the life was very jarring--such a whirl. We must try to make our little
rooms as restful as possible. Do come to my room and work whenever you
like. I always think it helps, don’t you, to have somebody else in the
room concentrating.’
Earnestly her eyes beamed and glinted behind their glasses. Presumably
she was kind and well-meaning, but her skin was greasy and pink was not
her colour; and her lank hair smelt; and when she talked she spat. The
colourless face had nothing of youth in it. Perhaps this was what really
clever girls looked like.
‘I’ve spent to-day putting my room to rights,’ said Mabel, looking
happily round her. ‘I do enjoy having a little corner of my own, my own
things round me and.... To-morrow I must start work in earnest. How do
you feel about your work? You’re bound to waste time at first unless you
plan out your day methodically. You must come and work in here. I won’t
disturb you. I’m a very hard worker myself. I shan’t mix much with the
other students. She flushed. ‘I shan’t have time. And then of course
there’s getting into Cambridge for lectures and.... Do you ride a
bicycle? I find since I had pneumonia it tires me so.... We must go to
lectures together at first--keep each other company....’
‘Are you reading English too?’ said Judith with sinking heart.
‘Oh yes.’ Mabel bit her finger nervously. ‘I didn’t manage to get a
scholarship, you know. It was a disappointment. I was feeling very
poorly and altogether.... I didn’t do myself justice, Miss Fisher said.
She wrote such a nice letter and ... I was so set on coming here, it
meant so much to me, I want to teach, you know--if my health permits....
I haven’t very good health ... so with what I’d managed to save and a
little help from my mother ... she couldn’t afford it really but when
she saw what it meant to me ... so I must do well ... I can’t disappoint
her.... Are you preparing to earn your living?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Judith blankly.
‘You don’t look like it,’ said the other hurriedly with a furtive
half-hostile glance at Judith’s clothes. ‘Most girls who come here have
got to depend on their brains for a livelihood, so of course no one’s
got a right to come here just to amuse themselves, have they? But I dare
say you’re going to do very well. Miss Fisher told me this morning you’d
done very good work for the scholarship. Oh yes. She quite praised you.
I thought perhaps ... some of my notes and essays might be of use to
you.... I take very full notes--my memory rather fails me sometimes and
then.... I thought perhaps if we worked together we might--you
know--help each other.... Another mind coming fresh to a subject.... We
might....’
Her eyes betrayed her: brain-sucker, probing for new full-blooded life.
Judith thanked her politely and rose to go.
‘Don’t hurry,’ said Mabel. ‘I’ll make you a cup of cocoa. I always think
cocoa’s so nourishing.’
She busied herself with a saucepan over the fire and breathed
stertorously through her nose. Her skin glistened unhealthily in the
firelight. The room was very close, full of pink casement cloth, and
china ornaments. She had not minded the carpet: she had decorated the
room to suit it. On the mantelpiece stood many photographs of creatures
stoutly whaleboned about the throat or heavily whiskered and collared
according to sex; and alone on top of the book-case was set the
incongruous lovely photograph of a girl with curly bobbed hair. The
large eyes laughed at you mischievously: the face insisted on being
looked at--a soft face, sensuous and wilful, with a wide bow of a mouth;
the smile a trifle consciously sweet, but irresistible.
‘Oh, how pretty!’ said Judith delightedly.
‘My sister Freda,’ said Mabel. ‘Yes, she’s generally admired.’ She
glanced suspiciously at Judith, as if to intercept the look of one
saying incredulously: ‘_Your_ sister?’ But Judith only looked dreamy.
For which minded most: Mabel because Freda was so pretty, or Freda
because Mabel was so repulsive? Or were they fond of each other, sharing
confidences and joking about Freda’s lovers?... And was Freda vain and
heartless or....
‘Here’s your cocoa,’ said Mabel. ‘Drink it hot.’
It was thick and syrupy, and Judith gave up after a few sips; but Mabel
drank hers with obvious relish and ate doughnuts greedily out of a bag.
And did Mabel’s mother console her by saying she was proud to have a
clever daughter at College?--because she couldn’t say, for instance,
with any truth: ‘Your hair, Mabel, is of a much finer quality than
Freda’s’--there was nothing of that sort to be said. Or did she pet
Freda and neglect Mabel?...
‘I really must go now,’ said Judith. ‘Thank you very much. Good-night.’
‘Would you like to go for a walk with me on Sunday after church? We
might go and hunt for pretty autumn leaves and berries. I always think
they make a room look so bright....’
‘Thank you very much.’
College leaves, college berries, picked with Mabel....
Supposing you looked like Mabel, would you love beauty even more
passionately, or be so jealous of it that you hated it?
Her eyes yearned at Judith. It was curious: they had in them a sort of
avid glint--almost like the eyes of old men in railway-carriages.... And
did Freda maliciously encourage her to wear pink flannel? And....
‘One thing more,’ she said. ‘I do hope you won’t allow yourself.... I
mean we mustn’t allow ourselves to--to get into a foolish set. It’s so
difficult to know at first.... There’s a set here, I’m told’--she
paused, flushing unbecomingly to her forehead--‘there’s a set here that
thinks a great deal too much about--about going out, and dancing,
and--men--all that sort of silliness.... There, I’m sure you don’t mind
my telling you. You can always come to me for advice.... I’m told the
Mistress judges so by the people we go about with....
‘Good night, Miss Earle,’ she finished earnestly. ‘There’s your way: up
the stairs and turn to the right. I’ll look out for you at breakfast
to-morrow.’
Black Mabel. Haunted days and nights stretched out. No hope. No escape.
Three years of Mabel settling down like a nightmare-bat, blotting out
the light. Nobody but Mabel was going to speak to you for three years.
She passed two maids, flaxen-haired, red-cheeked, thick-featured
Cambridgeshire types. They were turning out the lights in the corridors;
and they smiled broadly at her. Maids were always nice, anyway.
‘Good night,’ she said shyly.
‘Good night, Miss.’
At the corner of the corridor she heard one remark to the other:
‘There’s a sweet faice.’
A little comforted, she came to her own room, undressed and dropped a
few tears.
If he could have known how very unlike his Cambridge this place was! Too
late now.... There was not a spire, not a light of Cambridge to be seen,
not a whisper to be heard. Almost she could believe something Childe
Rolandish had happened to it and it was gone; so that even its unseen
nearness was no comfort.
‘Come in,’ she said in startled response to a tap at her door. Someone
stood there in a dressing-gown, with bright hair rolling over her
shoulders.
‘Oh!’ cried Judith in uncontrollable rapture. ‘I did hope....’
They gazed at each other, blushing and radiant.
‘I saw you at Hall.’
‘Yes. I saw you.’
‘I sat at the wrong table. It was awful.’
‘I wish you’d been sitting beside me.... What’s your name?’
‘Judith Earle. What’s yours?’
‘Jennifer Baird.’
Yes. Jennifer was the right name.
‘That’s a nice name.’
‘Why didn’t you come yesterday?’
‘I just forgot. I muddled the date.... Wasn’t it an awful beginning?’
They laughed.
‘I always make muddles, don’t you? I never remember dates and things.’
‘Nor do I.’
They laughed again.
‘I am thankful to find you, I can tell you,’ said Jennifer. ‘I was
thinking I should be obliged to leave.’
‘So was I.’
They beamed at each other.
‘This is the third time I’ve come to find you. Where on earth have you
been? I was afraid you’d locked yourself into the lavatory to cry or
something.’
‘I’ve been....’ Judith laughed happily. ‘I’ve been with something
awful.’
‘What?’
‘It’s called Mabel Fuller.’
‘My God! Fuller. Has she pounced on you already? She tried me this
morning. It’s a funny thing,--she makes straight for the pretty ones.
That sounds as if I meant I was pretty.’
‘So you are.’
‘I only meant I wasn’t so hideous as her and you’re lovely. She’s a
vampire-bat. D’you know, I found out something: she’s twenty-seven at
least. Think of it! I was rude to her. I suppose you weren’t. I should
say you were much more well-bred than me.’
‘I wondered if she wasn’t a _tiny_ bit pathetic?’
‘God, no! What an idea! She hasn’t a notion how revolting she is. She
actually prattled about dress to me,--wondering how she’d look in a
jumper like mine. As if anything but an Invisible Cloak would improve
her. I can’t stand people who spit when they talk.’
‘I do wonder,’ pondered Judith, ‘how people like that get produced from
quite normal parents. It must be the working-out of some ancient and
fearful curse.’
‘She’s an ancient and fearful curse anyway,’ said Jennifer gloomily.
‘I’ll tell you another thing. I believe she’s got sex-repression.’ She
stared impressively at Judith; then broke into loud whistling. ‘Have you
got a cigarette? Never mind.... I’ve just learnt to blow smoke-rings.
I’ll teach you.’ More whistling. ‘It’s terrible to be so swayed by
appearances. I’m afraid it’s a sign of a weak character. Ugly people
rouse all Hell’s devils in me. And beautiful ones make me feel like the
morning stars singing together. I want beauty, beauty, beauty.... Don’t
you? Lovely people round me, lovely stuffs, lovely colours--lashions and
lashions of gorgeous things to touch and taste and look at and smell.’
She flung her head back on its round white throat and took a deep
sighing breath. ‘O colours!... I could eat them. I’m awfully sensuous--I
look it, don’t you think? Or do I mean sensual? I always get them
muddled; but I know it’s unladylike to be one of them. I say--why didn’t
you speak to me after Hall?’
‘Oh, how could I? You had people all round you. I passed your room, and
there were dozens of girls in it.’
‘Oh yes! Creatures I was at school with. I had a year in Paris after I
left school. I think it developed me. I feel so much more mature than my
contemporaries. I used to hunt at Chantilly. Have you ever done that?...
They were all talking about you.’
‘I heard them say I had such a haughty expression. I haven’t, have I?’
‘Of course not. That’s women all over. I wonder if men are really nicer?
I suppose you’re not engaged?’
‘Oh no!’
‘Nor am I. I don’t suppose I shall ever marry. I’m too tall,--six foot
in my stockings. It’s awful, because I’m sure I shall always be falling
in love myself--and I’m terrified of getting repressions. Are you in
love?’
Judith thought of Roddy, blushed and said no.
‘Oh well, you’re too young I suppose. I’m twenty and two months--God!...
Perhaps we shall both get engaged while we’re here. Me first, I hope.’
She chuckled deeply.
‘But we shan’t have time for anything except work,’ said Judith. ‘Mabel
says we’re expected to do at least eight hours a day.’
‘Christ! Does she though! Just the sort of miserable immorality she
would feed you up with. We’re in the world to enjoy ourselves, not to
pass exams, aren’t we? Well then ... I have a prejudice against
intellectualism. It leads to all sorts of menaces. Perhaps you don’t
know.... I dare say you were brought up in blackest ignorance,--like me.
But I’ve managed to overcome all obstacles in the way of enlightenment.
Do you call innocence a virtue? I don’t. I call it stupidity.’ She
talked on so rapidly that her words ran into each other and got blurred.
Leaning heavily on the mantelpiece she continued. ‘Are these photographs
your people? They look divinely aristocratic. You’re not an Honourable
are you? You look as if you might be. Come and see my room. I say, let’s
make our rooms absolutely divine, shall we?’
‘Mother told me to get whatever furniture and things I wanted,’ said
Judith. ‘But what’s the good with that carpet?’
‘I’ve turned mine upside down,’ said Jennifer. ‘It’s an artistic buff
now. Come and look.’
She led the way back to her room and opened the door upon a scene of
chaos. Her clothes had been half-unpacked and left about in heaps. The
room was full of smoke and reeked of stale Gold Flakes. Gramophone
records, biscuits, apples, cake-knives, spoons, glasses and cups
smeared with cocoa-sediment were strewn about the floor.
‘It isn’t as nice as I thought,’ said Jennifer. ‘The swine have feasted
and rioted; _and_ left me to clear up after them. Christ! What a
spectacle! Have an apple.’
She sat down in her trunk and looked discouraged.
‘I say, Judith Earle, do you think you’re going to enjoy College?’
‘Not much. It’s so ugly and vulgar.’
‘It is. And the students are such very jolly girls.’
‘Yes. And I’m frightened of them. I don’t know a soul. I’ve never in my
life been with a lot of people and I don’t feel I shall ever get used
even to the smell of them. It’s different for you. You’ve heaps of
friends already.’
‘Nonsense. There’s no one. I’ve been screeching like a parrot all the
evening, pretending to be awfully jolly too; but it strikes me as pretty
grim....’ She brooded and whistled. ‘More than a little grim....’ She
drooped, flickered out completely.
‘We’d--we’d better stick it out together,’ said Judith with a blush,
fearful lest her suggestion should condemn her to Jennifer--for Mabel
had said it and she had felt sick.
‘I should say we will. A thing’s much less bloody if you can talk about
its bloodiness to someone else. Do you mind the word bloody? I noticed
you flinched. It’s all a question of habit.’ She revived--‘Christ! To
think only a few days ago I was stalking in Scotland with my angel
cousins! It’s a very broadening thing for a young girl to have
boy-cousins of her own age. I’m indebted to them for a lot of useful
information--about sex and one thing and another. One of them gave me a
bottle of champagne as a parting present. We’ve been drinking it--out of
tooth glasses. Ugh! I dare say I’m a little tight. Don’t you think so?
One’s got to do something.... I’d offer you some, but I’m afraid the
swine finished it. The bottle’s in the cupboard.’ She climbed over a
trunk, opened the cupboard door and looked in. ‘As I thought. Not a
drop....’
There was a silence. She lit a cigarette, formed her full and vivid lips
into an O and struggled painstakingly with smoke-rings.
The suddenness, thought Judith--the sureness, the excitement!...
glorious, glorious creature of warmth and colour! Her blue eyes had a
wild brilliance between their thick lashes: they flew and paused,
stared, flew again.... Oh, Jennifer!...
‘Isn’t it awful,’ said Jennifer, ‘to have enlightened parents? They
never ask you whether you care to be enlightened too, but offer you up
from the age of ten onwards as a living sacrifice to examiners. And
_then_ they expect you to be grateful. Hmm!’ She glowered at the
photographs of a pleasant-looking couple on the mantelpiece. ‘God! I’m
tired. Give me a hand out of this trunk, and I’ll get to bed.’
She struggled up, slipped off her dressing gown and stood revealed in
striped silk pyjamas.
‘Too late for my exercises to-night,’ she said. ‘Are you keen on muscle?
It’s more womanly not to be. I’ve over-developed mine. I can lend you a
book called “How to Keep Fit” with pictures of young men in loin-cloths.
You look wiry. Can you run?’
‘Yes--and climb----’ said Judith excitedly.
‘Oh!... I can’t imagine you doing anything except wander about looking
innocent and bewildered. We might have some tests to-morrow!’
She went to the window, opened it wide and leaned out. Judith came and
stood beside her. The night was still, dark and starry.
‘The grounds are beautiful,’ murmured Judith.
‘Yes--great trees----’ she murmured softly back. ‘And nightingales, I
believe, in spring.’
‘Nightingales....’
‘Oh, there’s lots of things to look forward to,’ said Jennifer, turning
round and smiling full at Judith. Their eyes sparkled and flashed:
sympathy flowed like an electric current between them. She went on:
‘Oh Lord! Look at my bedroom. I’ll just clear a space and sleep among
the wreckage. Won’t my gyp be pleased? It’s best to begin as I shall
certainly go on, so I’ll leave it to her. She’ll like it as soon as I’ve
won her heart.... Good night, Judith. I must tell you most people call
me Jane.’
‘I shall call you Jennifer. It’s delicious,--different from anyone else.
It’s like you.’
From the pillow Jennifer’s face broke into shy smiles, like a gratified
child’s.
Judith busied herself quietly in the sitting-room, tidying the cups and
knives,--enjoying the novel sensation of rendering service. After a few
moments she called:
‘You wouldn’t suppose from their conversation that these girls are
intellectual--would you?’
There was no reply. After a few more minutes she peeped into the
bedroom. Jennifer’s peaceful flushed countenance and regular breathing
greeted her astonished senses.
She was sleeping the sleep of the slightly intoxicated just.
2
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: of the 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.
3
King’s Chapel at Evensong. The coloured windows faded gradually out:
only a twilight blue was left beneath the 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.
4
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.