Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf (best novels to read for students .TXT) 📖

“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.

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