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

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.

 

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.

 

“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.

 

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