Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf (best novels to read for students .TXT) đź“–
- Author: Virginia Woolf
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Book online «Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf (best novels to read for students .TXT) 📖». Author Virginia Woolf
Two fishing luggers, presumably from St. Ives Bay, were now sailing in
an opposite direction from the steamer, and the floor of the sea became
alternately clear and opaque. As for the bee, having sucked its fill of
honey, it visited the teasle and thence made a straight line to Mrs.
Pascoe’s patch, once more directing the tourists’ gaze to the old
woman’s print dress and white apron, for she had come to the door of the
cottage and was standing there.
There she stood, shading her eyes and looking out to sea.
For the millionth time, perhaps, she looked at the sea. A peacock
butterfly now spread himself upon the teasle, fresh and newly emerged,
as the blue and chocolate down on his wings testified. Mrs. Pascoe went
indoors, fetched a cream pan, came out, and stood scouring it. Her face
was assuredly not soft, sensual, or lecherous, but hard, wise, wholesome
rather, signifying in a room full of sophisticated people the flesh and
blood of life. She would tell a lie, though, as soon as the truth.
Behind her on the wall hung a large dried skate. Shut up in the parlour
she prized mats, china mugs, and photographs, though the mouldy little
room was saved from the salt breeze only by the depth of a brick, and
between lace curtains you saw the gannet drop like a stone, and on
stormy days the gulls came shuddering through the air, and the steamers’
lights were now high, now deep. Melancholy were the sounds on a winter’s
night.
The picture papers were delivered punctually on Sunday, and she pored
long over Lady Cynthia’s wedding at the Abbey. She, too, would have
liked to ride in a carriage with springs. The soft, swift syllables of
educated speech often shamed her few rude ones. And then all night to
hear the grinding of the Atlantic upon the rocks instead of hansom cabs
and footmen whistling for motor cars. … So she may have dreamed,
scouring her cream pan. But the talkative, nimble-witted people have
taken themselves to towns. Like a miser, she has hoarded her feelings
within her own breast. Not a penny piece has she changed all these
years, and, watching her enviously, it seems as if all within must be
pure gold.
The wise old woman, having fixed her eyes upon the sea, once more
withdrew. The tourists decided that it was time to move on to the
Gurnard’s Head.
Three seconds later Mrs. Durrant rapped upon the door.
“Mrs. Pascoe?” she said.
Rather haughtily, she watched the tourists cross the field path. She
came of a Highland race, famous for its chieftains.
Mrs. Pascoe appeared.
“I envy you that bush, Mrs. Pascoe,” said Mrs. Durrant, pointing the
parasol with which she had rapped on the door at the fine clump of St.
John’s wort that grew beside it. Mrs. Pascoe looked at the bush
deprecatingly.
“I expect my son in a day or two,” said Mrs. Durrant. “Sailing from
Falmouth with a friend in a little boat. … Any news of Lizzie yet,
Mrs. Pascoe?”
Her long-tailed ponies stood twitching their ears on the road twenty
yards away. The boy, Curnow, flicked flies off them occasionally. He saw
his mistress go into the cottage; come out again; and pass, talking
energetically to judge by the movements of her hands, round the
vegetable plot in front of the cottage. Mrs. Pascoe was his aunt. Both
women surveyed a bush. Mrs. Durrant stooped and picked a sprig from it.
Next she pointed (her movements were peremptory; she held herself very
upright) at the potatoes. They had the blight. All potatoes that year
had the blight. Mrs. Durrant showed Mrs. Pascoe how bad the blight was
on her potatoes. Mrs. Durrant talked energetically; Mrs. Pascoe listened
submissively. The boy Curnow knew that Mrs. Durrant was saying that it
is perfectly simple; you mix the powder in a gallon of water; “I have
done it with my own hands in my own garden,” Mrs. Durrant was saying.
“You won’t have a potato left—you won’t have a potato left,” Mrs.
Durrant was saying in her emphatic voice as they reached the gate. The
boy Curnow became as immobile as stone.
Mrs. Durrant took the reins in her hands and settled herself on the
driver’s seat.
“Take care of that leg, or I shall send the doctor to you,” she called
back over her shoulder; touched the ponies; and the carriage started
forward. The boy Curnow had only just time to swing himself up by the
toe of his boot. The boy Curnow, sitting in the middle of the back seat,
looked at his aunt.
Mrs. Pascoe stood at the gate looking after them; stood at the gate till
the trap was round the corner; stood at the gate, looking now to the
right, now to the left; then went back to her cottage.
Soon the ponies attacked the swelling moor road with striving forelegs.
Mrs. Durrant let the reins fall slackly, and leant backwards. Her
vivacity had left her. Her hawk nose was thin as a bleached bone through
which you almost see the light. Her hands, lying on the reins in her
lap, were firm even in repose. The upper lip was cut so short that it
raised itself almost in a sneer from the front teeth. Her mind skimmed
leagues where Mrs. Pascoe’s mind adhered to its solitary patch. Her mind
skimmed leagues as the ponies climbed the hill road. Forwards and
backwards she cast her mind, as if the roofless cottages, mounds of
slag, and cottage gardens overgrown with foxglove and bramble cast shade
upon her mind. Arrived at the summit, she stopped the carriage. The pale
hills were round her, each scattered with ancient stones; beneath was
the sea, variable as a southern sea; she herself sat there looking from
hill to sea, upright, aquiline, equally poised between gloom and
laughter. Suddenly she flicked the ponies so that the boy Curnow had to
swing himself up by the toe of his boot.
The rooks settled; the rooks rose. The trees which they touched so
capriciously seemed insufficient to lodge their numbers. The tree-tops
sang with the breeze in them; the branches creaked audibly and dropped
now and then, though the season was midsummer, husks or twigs. Up went
the rooks and down again, rising in lesser numbers each time as the
sager birds made ready to settle, for the evening was already spent
enough to make the air inside the wood almost dark. The moss was soft;
the tree-trunks spectral. Beyond them lay a silvery meadow. The pampas
grass raised its feathery spears from mounds of green at the end of the
meadow. A breadth of water gleamed. Already the convolvulus moth was
spinning over the flowers. Orange and purple, nasturtium and cherry pie,
were washed into the twilight, but the tobacco plant and the passion
flower, over which the great moth spun, were white as china. The rooks
creaked their wings together on the tree-tops, and were settling down
for sleep when, far off, a familiar sound shook and trembled—increased
—fairly dinned in their ears—scared sleepy wings into the air again—
the dinner bell at the house.
After six days of salt wind, rain, and sun, Jacob Flanders had put on a
dinner jacket. The discreet black object had made its appearance now and
then in the boat among tins, pickles, preserved meats, and as the voyage
went on had become more and more irrelevant, hardly to be believed in.
And now, the world being stable, lit by candle-light, the dinner jacket
alone preserved him. He could not be sufficiently thankful. Even so his
neck, wrists, and face were exposed without cover, and his whole person,
whether exposed or not, tingled and glowed so as to make even black
cloth an imperfect screen. He drew back the great red hand that lay on
the tablecloth. Surreptitiously it closed upon slim glasses and curved
silver forks. The bones of the cutlets were decorated with pink frills-and yesterday he had gnawn ham from the bone! Opposite him were hazy,
semi-transparent shapes of yellow and blue. Behind them, again, was the
grey-green garden, and among the pear-shaped leaves of the escallonia
fishing-boats seemed caught and suspended. A sailing ship slowly drew
past the women’s backs. Two or three figures crossed the terrace hastily
in the dusk. The door opened and shut. Nothing settled or stayed
unbroken. Like oars rowing now this side, now that, were the sentences
that came now here, now there, from either side of the table.
“Oh, Clara, Clara!” exclaimed Mrs. Durrant, and Timothy Durrant adding,
“Clara, Clara,” Jacob named the shape in yellow gauze Timothy’s sister,
Clara. The girl sat smiling and flushed. With her brother’s dark eyes,
she was vaguer and softer than he was. When the laugh died down she
said: “But, mother, it was true. He said so, didn’t he? Miss Eliot
agreed with us. …”
But Miss Eliot, tall, grey-headed, was making room beside her for the
old man who had come in from the terrace. The dinner would never end,
Jacob thought, and he did not wish it to end, though the ship had sailed
from one corner of the window-frame to the other, and a light marked the
end of the pier. He saw Mrs. Durrant gaze at the light. She turned to
him.
“Did you take command, or Timothy?” she said. “Forgive me if I call you
Jacob. I’ve heard so much of you.” Then her eyes went back to the sea.
Her eyes glazed as she looked at the view.
“A little village once,” she said, “and now grown. …” She rose, taking
her napkin with her, and stood by the window.
“Did you quarrel with Timothy?” Clara asked shyly. “I should have.”
Mrs. Durrant came back from the window.
“It gets later and later,” she said, sitting upright, and looking down
the table. “You ought to be ashamed—all of you. Mr. Clutterbuck, you
ought to be ashamed.” She raised her voice, for Mr. Clutterbuck was
deaf.
“We ARE ashamed,” said a girl. But the old man with the beard went on
eating plum tart. Mrs. Durrant laughed and leant back in her chair, as
if indulging him.
“We put it to you, Mrs. Durrant,” said a young man with thick spectacles
and a fiery moustache. “I say the conditions were fulfilled. She owes me
a sovereign.”
“Not BEFORE the fish—with it, Mrs. Durrant,” said Charlotte Wilding.
“That was the bet; with the fish,” said Clara seriously. “Begonias,
mother. To eat them with his fish.”
“Oh dear,” said Mrs. Durrant.
“Charlotte won’t pay you,” said Timothy.
“How dare you …” said Charlotte.
“That privilege will be mine,” said the courtly Mr. Wortley, producing a
silver case primed with sovereigns and slipping one coin on to the
table. Then Mrs. Durrant got up and passed down the room, holding
herself very straight, and the girls in yellow and blue and silver gauze
followed her, and elderly Miss Eliot in her velvet; and a little rosy
woman, hesitating at the door, clean, scrupulous, probably a governess.
All passed out at the open door.
“When you are as old as I am, Charlotte,” said Mrs. Durrant, drawing the
girl’s arm within hers as they paced up and down the terrace.
“Why are you so sad?” Charlotte asked impulsively.
“Do I seem to you sad? I hope not,” said Mrs. Durrant.
“Well, just now. You’re NOT old.”
“Old enough to be Timothy’s mother.” They stopped.
Miss Eliot was looking through Mr. Clutterbuck’s telescope at the edge
of the terrace. The deaf old
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