 Chapter one of Jacob's Room. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Amanda Richmond, Virginia. Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf. Chapter one. So of course, wrote Betty Flanders, pressing her heels rather deeper in the sand. There was nothing for it but to leave. Slowly welling from the point of her golden nib, pale blue ink dissolved the full stop. For there her pen stuck, her eyes fixed, and tears slowly filled them. The entire bay quivered, the lighthouse wobbled, and she had the illusion that the mast of Mr. Connor's little yacht was bending like a wax candle in the sun. She winked quickly. Accidents were awful things. She winked again. The mast was straight, the waves were regular, the lighthouse was upright, but the blot had spread. Nothing for it but to leave, she read. Well if Jacob doesn't want to play. The shadow of Archer, her eldest son, fell across the note paper and looked blue on the sand, and she felt chilly. It was the third of September already. If Jacob doesn't want to play. What a horrid blot. It must be getting late. Where is that tiresome little boy, she said? I don't see him. Run and find him. Tell him to come at once. But mercifully she scribbled, ignoring the full stop. Everything seemed satisfactorily arranged. Packed though we are like herrings in a barrel and forced to stand the perambulator which the landlady quite naturally won't allow. Such were Betty Flanders' letters to Captain Barfoot. Many paged, tears stained. Scarborough is 700 miles from Cornwall. Captain Barfoot is in Scarborough. Seabrook is dead. Tears made all the dolly as in her garden undulate in red waves and flashed the glass house in her eyes and spangled the kitchen with bright knives and made Mrs. Jarvis, the rector's wife, think at church while the hymn tomb played and Mrs. Flanders bent low over her little boy's heads. That marriage is a fortress and widows stray solitary in the open fields, picking up stones, gleaning a few golden straws, lonely, unprotected poor creatures. Mrs. Flanders had been a widow for these two years. Jacob, Jacob, Archer shouted. Scarborough, Mrs. Flanders wrote on the envelope and dashed a bold line beneath. It was her native town, the hub of the universe, but a stamp. She ferreted in her bag, then held it up mouth downwards, then fumbled in her lap, also vigorously that Charles Steele and the Panama Hat suspended his paintbrush. Like the antenna of some irritable insect, it positively trembled. Here was that woman moving, actually going to get up, confound her. He struck the canvas a hasty violet black dab, for the landscape needed it. It was too pale, greys flowing into lavenders and one star or a white golf suspended just so. Too pale as usual. The critics would say it was too pale, for he was an unknown man exhibiting obscurity, a favorite with his landlady's children, wearing a cross on his watch chain and much gratified of his landlady's likeness pictures, which they often did. Jacob! Jacob! Archer shouted. Exasperated by the noise, yet loving children, Steele picked nervously at the dark little coils on his palette. I saw your brother! I saw your brother! he said, nodding his head as Archer lagged past him, trailing his spade and scowling at the old gentleman in spectacles. Over there, by the rock, Steele muttered with his brush between his teeth, squeezing out raw Sienna and keeping his eyes fixed on Betty Flanders' back. Jacob! Jacob! shouted Archer, lagging on after a second. The voice had an extraordinary sadness, pure from all body, pure from all passion, going out into the world, solitary, unanswered, breaking against rocks. So it sounded. Steele frowned, but was pleased by the effect of the black. It was just that note which brought the rest together. One may learn to paint at fifty, there's Titian. And so, having found the right tint, up he looked and saw to his horror a cloud over the bay. Mrs. Flanders Rose slapped her coat this side and that to get the sand off and picked up her black parasol. The rock was one of those tremendously solid brown or rather black rocks which emerged from the sand like something primitive. Rough with crinkled limpet shells and sparsely strewn with locks of dry seaweed, a small boy has to stretch his legs far apart and indeed to feel rather heroic before he gets to the top. But there, on the very top, is a hollow full of water with a sandy bottom, with a blob of jelly stuck to the side and some muscles. A fish darts across. The fringe of yellow brown seaweed flutters and out pushes an opal-shelled crab. Oh, a huge crab! Jacob murmured and begins his journey on weakly legs on the sandy bottom. Now Jacob plunged his hand. The crab was cool and very light, but the water was thick with sand and so, scrambling down, Jacob was about to jump, holding his bucket in front of him when he saw, stretched entirely rigid, side by side, their faces very red, an enormous man and woman. An enormous man and woman, it was early closing day, were stretched motionless with their heads on pocket handkerchiefs, side by side, within a few feet of the sea, while two or three gulls gracefully skirted the incoming waves and settled near their boots. The large red faces lying on the bandana handkerchiefs stared up at Jacob, Jacob stared down at them. Holding his bucket very carefully, Jacob then jumped deliberately and trotted away very nonchalantly at first, but faster and faster as the waves came, creaming up to him, and he had to swerve to avoid them, and the gulls rose in front of him and floated out and settled again a little further on. A large black woman was sitting on the sand. He ran towards her. Nanny, nanny, he cried, sobbing the words out on the crust of each gasping breath. The waves came round her. She was a rock. She was covered with the seaweed which pops when it is pressed. He was lost. There he stood, his face composed itself. He was about to roar when, lying among the black sticks and straw under the cliff, he saw a whole skull, perhaps a cow's skull, a skull perhaps with the teeth in it. Sobbing, but absentmindedly, he ran farther and farther away until he held the skull in his arms. There he is, cried Mrs. Flanders, coming round the rock and covering the whole space of the beach in a few seconds. What has he got hold of? Put it down, Jacob. Drop it this moment. Something horrid, I know. Why didn't you stay with us? Not a little boy. Now put it down. Now come along, both of you. And she swept round, holding Archer by one hand and fumbling for Jacob's arm with the other, but he ducked down and picked up the sheep's jaw which was loose. Swinging her bag, clutching her parasol, holding Archer's hand and telling the story of the gunpowder explosion in which poor Mr. Kernel had lost his eye, Mrs. Flanders hurried up this deep lane, aware all the time in the depths of her mind of some very discomfort. There on the sand, not far from the lovers lay the old sheep's skull without its jaw. Clean, white, wind swept, sand rubbed. A more unpolluted piece of bone existed nowhere on the coast of Cornwall. This sea holly would grow through the eye sockets, it would turn to powder, or some golfer hitting his ball one fine day would disperse a little dust. No, but not in lodging, thought Mrs. Flanders. It's a great experiment coming so far with young children. There's no man to help with the perambulator, and Jacob is such a handful, so obstinate already. Throw it away, dear dew, she said, as they got into the road. But Jacob squirmed away from her, and the wind rising she took out her bonnet pin, looked at the sea, and stuck it in afresh. The wind was rising. The waves showed that uneasiness, like something alive. Restive, expecting the whip, of waves before a storm. The fishing boats were leaning to the water's brim. A pale yellow light shot across the purple sea, and shut. The lighthouse was lit. Come along, said Betty Flanders. The sun blazed in their faces and gilded the great blackberries, trembling out from the hedge which Archer tried to strip as they passed. Don't lag, boys, you've got nothing to change into, said Betty, pulling them along, and looking with uneasy emotion at the earth displayed so lordly, with sudden sparks of light from greenhouses and gardens, with a sort of yellow and black mutability against this blazing sunset. This astonishing agitation and vitality of colour which stirred Betty Flanders and made her think of responsibility and danger. She gripped Archer's hand. On she plotted up the hill. What did I ask you to remember, she said? I don't know, said Archer. Well, I don't know either, said Betty, humorously and simply. And who shall deny that this blankness of mind, when combined with profusion, mother-wit, old-wife's tales, haphazard ways, moments of astonishing daring, humour and sentimentality, who shall deny that in these respects every woman is nicer than any man? Well, Betty Flanders to begin with. She had her hand upon the garden gate. The meat, she exclaimed, striking the latch down. She had forgotten the meat. There was Rebecca at the window. The bareness of Mrs. Pierce's front room was fully displayed at ten o'clock at night when a powerful oil lamp stood on the middle of the table. The harsh light fell in the garden, cut straight across the lawn, lit up a child's bucket in a purple aster and reached to the hedge. Mrs. Flanders had left her sewing on the table. There were her large reels of white cotton and her steel spectacles, her needle case, her brown wool, wound round an old postcard. There were the bowl rushes and the strand magazines, and the linoleum sandy from the boy's boots. A daddy-long leg shot from corner to corner and hit the lamp globe. The wind blew straight dashes of rain across the window, which flashed silver as they passed through the light. A single leaf tapped hurriedly, persistently upon the glass. There was a hurricane out at sea. Archer could not sleep. Mrs. Flanders stooped over him. Think of the fairies, said Betty Flanders. Think of the lovely, lovely birds settling down on their nests. Now shut your eyes and see the old mother bird with the worm in her beak. Now turn and shut your eyes, she murmured, and shut your eyes. The lodging-house seemed full of gurgling and rushing. The sister and overflowing, water bubbling and squeaking and running along the pipes and streaming down the windows. What saw that water rushing in, murmured Archer? It's only the bath-water running away, said Mrs. Flanders. Something snapped out of doors. I say, won't that steamer sink? said Archer, opening his eyes. Of course it won't, said Mrs. Flanders. The captain's in bed long ago. Shut your eyes and think of the fairies, fast asleep under the flowers. I thought he'd never get off. Such a hurricane, she whispered to Rebecca who was bending over a spirit lamp in the small room next door. The wind rushed outside, but the small flame of the spirit lamp burnt quietly, shaded from the cot by a book stood on edge. Did he take his bottle well? Mrs. Flanders whispered, and Rebecca nodded and went to the cot and turned down the quilt, and Mrs. Flanders bent over and looked anxiously at the baby, asleep but frowning. The windows shook, and Rebecca stole like a cat and wedged it. The two women murmured over the spirit lamp, plotting the eternal conspiracy of hushed and clean bottles while the wind raged and gave a sudden wrench at the cheap fastenings. Both looked round at the cot, their lips were pursed. Mrs. Flanders crossed over to the cot. A sleep, whispered Rebecca, looking at the cot. Mrs. Flanders nodded. Good night, Rebecca, Mrs. Flanders murmured, and Rebecca called her ma'am, though they were conspirators plotting the eternal conspiracy of hushed and clean bottles. Mrs. Flanders had left the lamp burning in the front room. There were her spectacles, her sewing, and a letter with the scarborough postmark. She had not drawn the curtains either. The light blazed out across the patch of grass, fell on the child's green bucket with the gold line round it, and upon the aster which trembled violently beside it. For the wind was tearing across the coast, hurling itself at the hills, and leaping in sudden gusts on top of its own back. How it spread over the town in the hollow, how the light seemed to wink and quiver in its fury, lights in the harbour, lights in bedroom windows high up, and rolling dark waves before it, it raced over the Atlantic, jerking the stars above the ships this way and that. There was a click in the front sitting room. Mr. Pierce had extinguished the lamp. The garden went out. It was but a dark patch. Every inch was rained upon. Every blade of grass was bent by rain. Eyelids would have been fastened down by the rain. Lying on one's back, one would have seen nothing but muddle and confusion. Clouds turning and turning and something yellow tinted and sulfurous in the darkness. The little boys in the front bedroom had thrown off their blankets and lay under the sheets. It was hot, rather sticky and steamy. Archer lay spread out, with one arm striking across the pillow. He was flushed, and when the heavy curtain blew out a little, he turned and half opened his eyes. The wind actually stirred the cloth on the chest of drawers and led in a little light, so that the sharp edge of the chest of drawers was visible, running straight up until a white shape bulged out and a silver streak showed in the looking glass. In the other bed by the door Jacob lay asleep, fast asleep, profoundly unconscious. The sheep's jaw with the big yellow teeth in it lay at his feet. He had kicked it against the iron bed rail. Outside, the rain poured down more directly and powerfully as the wind fell in the early hours of the morning. The aster was beaten to the earth. The child's bucket was half full of rainwater, and the opal-shelled crab slowly circled round the bottom, trying with its weakly legs to climb the steep side, trying again and falling back, and trying again and again. End of Chapter 1, Recording by Amanda Richmond, Virginia Chapter 2 of Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Amanda Richmond, Virginia 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's 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 tumors 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 halfway between 40 and 50. 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 and large her figure, tinged her face with jollity and flooded her eyes for no reason that anyone 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 to their husband's 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 hunting 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 or a small boy, she said. She took it to please him. Then the rooster flew out of the henhouse, 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, feeding her mad 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 Dodds Hill enclosed, and Dodds Hill dominated the village. No words can exaggerate the importance of Dodds 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 that 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 Dodds 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 at 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, as 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-boat shoved out into it, the black arm of the pier hoarded it up. The whole city was pink and gold, domed, mis-breathed, resonant, strident. Banjo strummed, the parade smelt of tar which stuck to the heels. Goats suddenly cantered their carriages through crowds. It was observed how all 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, quarrelous faces on pillows and bath-chairs. Triangular hoardings were wheeled along by men in white coats. Captain George Bose 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 colored 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 ashtrays, the revolving fish, the attendant knitting behind six or seven chocolate boxes. Often she was quite alone with the fish for hours 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, everyone 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 gentlemen of independent means all wore the same blurred drugged expression. And through the chinks and the planks at their feet, they could see the green summer waves peacefully, amiably swaying around the iron pillars of the pier. But there was a time when none of this had any existence, thought the young man leading against the railings. Fix your eyes upon the lady's skirt, the gray 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 gray and turbulent the sea is in the seventeenth century. Let's to the museum. Cannonballs, arrowheads, Roman glass and a four-sip screen with Verdegris. The Reverend Jasper Floyd dug them up at his own expense early in the forties in the Roman camp on Dodds 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 orchard leaf, Johnny. Look at the little brown spots. Come, my dear, we must go home. Archer! Jacob! Archer! Jacob! Johnny piped after her, pivoting round on his heel and screwing 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 at 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 neighborhood who 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. Aught 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 tomorrow, certainly. Perhaps, Captain Barfoot, she had come to the word love. She went into the garden in red, 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 his dick. 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 nutty 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 and 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 anyone, let alone Mr. Floyd. He 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 goodbye, 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, and then he gave it to her uncle, then to Hackney, then to Mayersfield 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. Flanners' 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 and Piccadilly lately, he did not like to stop them in the street. Dear me, said Mrs. Flanners, when she read in the Scarborough and Harrogate Courier that the Reverend Andrew Floyd, etc., etc., had been made principal of Mayersfield 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 Mayersfield House. Mrs. Flanners got up and went over to the offender 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. Flanners, as he stretched himself out in the sun and she smiled, thinking how she had had him gilded 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. 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 Dodd's Hill and away onto the moor, now lost behind a furs bush. Then off again held her skelter in a broiling sun. A fertility bast on a white stone in the Roman camp. From the valley came the sound of church bells. They were all eating roast beef and scarborough for it was Sunday when Jacob caught him. 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 fulvis hue, but there was no crescent upon the underwing. The tree had fallen the night he 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 beach leaves. It was a dry place. The red underwing had never come back though Jacob had waited. It was after twelve when he crossed the lawn and saw his mother in the bright room playing patience sitting up. How he frightened me, she had cried. She thought something dreadful had happened and he woke Rebecca who had to be up so early. There he stood pale come out of the depths of darkness in the hot room blinking at the light. No, it could not be a straw-bordered underwing. The sun had set again. Now it was calling over. Back came the sun dazzlingly. It fell like an eye upon the stirrups and then suddenly and yet very gently rested upon the bed upon the alarm clock and upon the butterfly box stood open. The pale clouded yellows had pelted over the moor. They had zig-zagged across the purple clover. The fratillaries flaunted along the hedgerows. The blues settled on the little tree in the middle of the clock. Miles away from home in a hollow among teasels beneath the ruin he had found the commas. He had seen a white admiral circling higher and higher around an oak tree but had never caught it. An old cottage woman living alone high up had told him of a purple butterfly which came every summer to her garden. The fox cubs played in the gorse in the early morning. The fox was walking her head in at the door. For the captain's coming to say goodbye it was the last day of the Easter holidays. Wednesday was Captain Barfoot's day. He dressed himself very neatly and blue surged took his rubber shot stick for he was lame and wanted two fingers on the left hand having served his country and set out from the house with the flagstaff precisely at four o'clock in the afternoon. Thank you Mr. Dickens. At the first command he would seek his son at the second he would stay the chair there in the bright strip. In old inhabitant himself he had much in common with Mrs. Barfoot James Copperd's daughter. The drinking fountain where West Street joins Broad Street is the gift of James Copperd who was mayor at the time of Queen Victoria's Jubilee and Copperd is painted upon municipal water and carts and over shop windows would caught the shark quite well. And when the men came by with posters she eyed them super silliously for she knew that she would never see the peros or the brother's Zeno or Daisy Bud in her troop of performing seals for Ellen Barfoot in her bath chair on the Esplanade was a prisoner. Civilization's prisoner all the bars of her cage falling across the Esplanade on sunny days when the town hall the jerry-peries stores the swimming bath and the swimming pool stand a little behind her smoking his pipe. She would ask him questions who people were who now kept Mr. Jones's shop then about the season and had Mrs. Dickens try whatever it might be the words issuing from her lips like crumbs of dry biscuit. She closed her eyes Mr. Dickens took a turn the feelings of a man had not altogether deserted him though as you saw him coming towards you you noticed how one knobbed black boot like an old horse who finds himself suddenly out of the shafts drawing no cart but as Mr. Dickens sucked in the smoke and puffed it out again the feelings of a man were perceptible in his eyes he was thinking how Captain Barfoot was now on his weight amount pleasant Captain Barfoot his master for at home in the little sitting room above the muse with the canary in the window and the girls at the sewing machine and Mrs. Dickens huddled up with the room in the front he helped the captain on his way to Mrs. Flanders he a man was in charge of Mrs. Barfoot a woman turning he saw that she was chatting with Mrs. Rogers turning again he saw that Mrs. Rogers had moved on so he came back to the bath chair and Mrs. Barfoot asked him the time and he took out his great silver watch and told her the time very obligingly as if he knew a great deal more about the time and everything and he was looking at the camera and seeing dogged to the southeast green against a blue sky that was suffused with dust color on the horizon he was marching up the hill in spite of his lameness there was something military in his approach Mrs. Jarvis as she came out of the rectory gate saw him coming and her new Finland dog Nero slowly swept his tail from side to side. Oh Captain Barfoot Mrs. Jarvis exclaimed good day honestly good day to you Mrs. Jarvis and Mrs. Jarvis walked on alone she was going to walk on the moor had she again been pacing her lawn late at night had she again tapped on the steady window and cried look at the moon look at the moon Herbert and Herbert looked at the moon Mrs. Jarvis walked on the moor when she was unhappy going as far as a certain saucer shaped hollow though she always meant to go to a more distant ridge and there she sat down and she was not very unhappy and seeing that she was 45 never perhaps would be very unhappy desperately unhappy that is and leave her husband and ruin a good man's career as she sometimes threatened still there is no need to say what risks a clergyman's wife runs when she walks on the moor short dark with kindling eyes a pheasants feather in her hat Mrs. Jarvis was just the sort of woman to lose her faith upon the moors to confound through and went on walking the moors looking at the moon behind the elm trees and feeling as she sat on the grass high above Scarborough yes yes when the lark soars when the sheep moving a step or two onwards cropped the turf and at the same time set their bells tinkling when the breeze first blows then dies down leaving the cheek kissed when the ships on the sea below seemed to cross each other and pass on as if drawn by an invisible hand when there are eyes in swims blue green emotional then Mrs. Jarvis heaving aside thanks to herself if only someone could give me if I could give someone but she does not know what she wants to give nor who could give it her Mrs. Flanders stepped out only five minutes ago captain said Rebecca captain Barfoot sat down in the armchair to wait resting his elbows on the arms putting one hand over the other sticking his lame leg straight out and there was something rigid about him did he think probably the same thoughts again and again but were they nice thoughts interesting thoughts he was a man with a temper tenacious faithful women would have felt here is law here is order therefore we must cherish this man he is on the bridge at night and handing him his cup or whatever it might be would run onto visions of shipwreck and disaster in which all the passengers come tumbling from the wrecking ship chucket matched with the storm thank wish to buy it by none other yet I have so Mrs. Jarvis would be think her as captain Barfoot suddenly blew his nose in a great red Banana handkerchief and it's the man's stupidity that's the cost of this and the storms my storm as well as his so Mrs. Jarvis would be think her when the captain dropped in to see them and found Herbert out and spent two or three hours Oh, Captain! said Mrs. Flanders, bursting into the drawing room. I had to run after Barker's man. I hope Rebecca. I hope Jacob. She was very much out of breath, yet not at all upset. And as she put down the hearth brush, which she had bought of the oil man, she said it was hot, flung the window further open, straightened a cover, picked up a book as if she were very confident, very fond of the Captain, and a great many years younger than he was. Indeed in her blue apron she did not look more than thirty-five. He was well over fifty. She moved her hands about the table. The Captain moved his head from side to side and made little sounds as Betty went on chattering, completely at his ease, after twenty years. Well, he said at length, I've heard from Mr. Polgate. He had heard from Mr. Polgate that he could advise nothing better than to send a boy to one of the universities. Mr. Floyd was at Cambridge. No, at Oxford. Well, at one or the other, said Mrs. Flanders. She looked out of the window. Little windows and the lilac green of the garden were reflected in her eyes. Archer is doing very well, she said. I have a very nice report from Captain Maxwell. I will leave you the letter to show Jacob, said the Captain, putting it clumsily back on its envelope. Jacob is after his butterflies as usual, said Mrs. Flanders irritably, but was surprised by a sudden afterthought. Cricket begins this week, of course. Edward Jenkinson has handed in his resignation, said Captain Barfoot. Then will you stand for the council? Mrs. Flanders exclaimed, looking the Captain full in the face. Well, about that, Captain Barfoot began, settling himself rather deeper in his chair. Jacob Flanders, therefore, went up to Cambridge in October 1906. End of Chapter 2. Recording by Amanda Richmond, Virginia. Chapter 3 of Jacob's Room by Virginia Wool. This is not a smoking carriage, Mrs. Norman protested, nervously but very feebly as the door swung open and a powerfully built young man jumped in. He seemed not to hear her. The train did not stop before it reached Cambridge, and here she was shut up alone in a railway carriage with the young man. She touched the spring of her dressing case and ascertained that the scent bottle and a novel from Moody's were both handy. The young man was standing up with his back to her, putting his bag in the rack. She would throw the scent bottle with her right hand, she decided, and tugged the communication cord with her left. She was fifty years of age and had a son at college. Nevertheless, it is a fact that men are dangerous. She read half a column of her newspaper, then stealthily looked over the edge to decide the question of safety by the infallible test of appearance. She would like to offer him her paper, but to young men read the morning post, she looked to see what he was reading, the daily telegraph. Taking note of socks, loose, of tie, shabby, she once more reached his face. She dwelt upon his mouth, though lips were shut, the eyes bent down since he was reading. All was firm yet youthful, indifferent, unconscious, as for knocking one down, no, no, no. She looked out of the window, smiling slightly now, and then came back again for he didn't notice her. Grave, unconscious, now he looked up, past her, he seemed so out of place somehow alone with an elderly lady. Then he fixed his eyes, which were blue on the landscape. He had not realized her presence, she thought, yet it was none of her fault that this was not a smoking carriage, if that was what he meant. Nobody sees anyone as he is, let alone an elderly lady sitting opposite a strange young man in a railway carriage. They see a whole, they see all sorts of things, they see themselves. Mrs. Norman now read three pages of one of Mr. Norris's novels. Should she say to the young man, and after all he was just the same age as her own boy, if you want to smoke, don't mind me. No, he seemed absolutely indifferent to her presence, she did not wish to interrupt. But since, even at her age, she noted his indifference, presumably he was in some way or other, to her at least, nice, handsome, interesting, distinguished, well-built, like her own boy. One must do the best one can with her report. Anyhow, this was Jacob Flanders, aged nineteen. It is no use trying to sum people up, one must follow hints, not exactly what is said, nor yet entirely what is done. For instance, when the train drew into the station, Mr. Flanders burst open the door and put the lady's dress in case out for her, saying, or rather mumbling, let me, very shyly. Sheedy was rather clumsy about it. Who, said the lady, meeting her son? But as there was a great crowd on the platform and Jacob had already gone, she did not finish her sentence. As this was Cambridge, as she was staying there for the weekend, as she saw nothing but young men all day long in streets and round tables, this sight of her fellow traveller was completely lost in her mind as the crooked pain dropped by a child into the wishing-world twirls in the water and disappears forever. They say the sky is the same everywhere, travellers, the ship wrecked, exiles, and the dying draw comfort from the thought, and no doubt if you are of a mystical tendency, consolation and even explanation shower down from the unbroken surface, but above Cambridge, anyhow above the roof of King's College Chapel, there is a difference. Out at sea a great city will cast a brightness into the night. Is it fanciful to suppose the sky washed into the crevices of King's College Chapel, lighter, thinner, more sparkling than the sky elsewhere? Does Cambridge burn not only into the night, but into the day? Look as they pass into service how airily the gowns blow out as though nothing dense and corporeal were within. What sculptured faces, what certainty, authority controlled by piety, although great boots march under the gowns. In what orderly procession they advance, thick wax candles stand upright, young men rise in white gowns, while the subservient eagle bears up for inspection the great white book. An inclined plane of light comes accurately through each window, purple and yellow even in its most diffused dust, while where it breaks upon stone that stone is softly chalked red, yellow and purple. Neither snow nor greenery, winter nor summer, has power over the old stained glass. As the sides of a lantern protect the flame so that it burns steadily even in the wildest night, burns steady and gravely illumines the tree trunks, so inside the chapel all was orderly. Gravely sounded the voices, wisely the organ replied as if buttressing human faith with the ascent of the elements. The white-robed figures crossed from side to side, now mounted steps, now descended, all very orderly. If you stand a lantern under a tree, every insect in the forest creeps up to it. A curious assembly, since though they scramble and swing and knock their heads against the glass, they seem to have no purpose. Something senseless inspires them. One gets tired of watching them as they amble around the lantern and blindly tap as if for admittance, one large toad being the most besotted of any and shouldering his way through the rest. Ah, but what's that? A terrifying volley of pistol shot rings out, cracks sharply, ripples spread, silence slaps smooth over sound. A tree, a tree has fallen, a sort of death in the forest. After that, the wind in the tree sounds melancholy. But this service in King's College Chapel, why allow women to take part in it? Surely if the mind wanders and Jacob look extraordinarily vacant, his head thrown back, his hymnbook open at the wrong place. If the mind wanders, it is because several hat shops and cupboards upon cupboards of colored dresses are displayed upon rush-bottom chairs. Though heads and bodies may be devout enough, one has a sense of individuals, some like blue, others brown, some feathers, others pansies and forget-me-nuts. No one would think of bringing a dog into church, for though a dog is all very well on a gravel path and shows no disrespect to flowers, the way he wanders down an aisle, looking, lifting a paw, and approaching a pillar with a purpose that makes the blood run cold with horror, should you be one of a congregation, alone shyness is out of the question. A dog destroys the service completely. So do these women. They are separately devout, distinguished and vouched for by theology, mathematics, Latin, and Greek of their husbands. Heaven knows why it is. For one thing thought Jacob, there is ugly as sin. Now there was a scraping and murmuring. He caught Timmy Durant's eye, looked very sternly at him, and then very solemnly, winked. Waverly. The villa on the road to Girton was called, not that Mr. Plummer admired Scott, or would have chosen any name at all, but names are useful when you have to entertain undergraduates. And as they sat waiting for the fourth undergraduate on Sunday at lunchtime, there was talk of names upon gates. How tiresome, Mrs. Plummer interrupted impulsively. Does anybody know Mr. Flanders? Mr. Durant knew him, and therefore blushed slightly, and said awkwardly something about being sure, looking at Mr. Plummer and hitching the right leg of his trouser as he spoke. Mr. Plummer got up and stood in front of the fireplace. Mrs. Plummer laughed like a straightforward, friendly fellow. In short, anything more horrible than the scene, the setting, the prospect, even the May garden being afflicted with chill sterility and a cloud shooting that moment across the sun cannot be imagined. There was the garden, of course. Everyone at the same moment looked at it. Owing to the cloud, the leaves ruffled gray, and the sparrows, there were two sparrows. I think, said Mrs. Plummer, taking advantage of the momentary respite while the young men stared at the garden to look at her husband, and he, not accepting full responsibility for the act, nevertheless touched the bell. There can be no excuse for this outrage upon one hour of human life, save the reflection which occurred to Mr. Plummer as he carved the button, that if no dawn ever gave a luncheon party, if Sunday after Sunday passed, if men went down, became lawyers, doctors, members of parliament, businessmen, if no dawn ever gave a luncheon party. Now, does lamb make the mint sauce, or mint sauce make the lamb? He asked the young man next to him to break a silence, which had already lasted five minutes and a half. I don't know, sir, said the young man, blushing very vividly. At this moment in came Mr. Flanders. He had mistaken the time. Now, though they had finished their meat, Mrs. Plummer took a second helping of cabbage. Jacob determined, of course, that he would eat his meat in the time it took her to finish her cabbage, looking once or twice to measure his speed. Only he was infernally hungry. Seeing this, Mrs. Plummer said that she was sure Mr. Flanders would not mind, and the tart was brought in. Nodding in a peculiar way, she directed the maid to give Mr. Flanders a second helping of mutton. She glanced at the mutton. Not much of the leg would be left for luncheon. It was none of her fault, since how could she control her father begetting her 40 years ago in the suburbs of Manchester? And once begotten, how could she do other than grow up cheese pairing, ambitious, with an instinctively accurate notion of the rungs of the ladder, and an ant-like assiduity and pushing George Plummer ahead of her to the top of the ladder? What was at the top of the ladder? A sense that all the rungs were beneath one apparently, since by the time that George Plummer became professor of physics or whatever it might be, Mrs. Plummer could only be in a condition to cling tight to her eminence, peer down at the ground, and goad her two plain daughters to climb the rungs of the ladder. I was down at the races yesterday, she said, with my two little girls. It was none of their fault, either. In they came to the drawing room in white frocks and blue sashes. They handed the cigarettes. Rhoda had inherited her father's cold gray eyes. Cold gray eyes George Plummer had, but in them was an abstract light. He could talk about Persia and the trade winds, the reformed bill and the cycle of the harvests. Books were on his shelves by Wells and Shaw, on the table series, six penny weeklies written by pale men in muddy boots, the weekly creak and screech of brains rinsed in cold water and rung dry, melancholy papers. I don't feel that I know the truth about anything till I've read them both, said Mrs. Plummer brightly, tapping the table of contents with her bare red hand, upon which the ring looked so incongruous. Oh God, oh God, oh God, exclaimed Jacob as the four undergraduates left the house. Oh my God, bloody beastly, he said, scanning the street for lilac or bicycle, anything to restore his sense of freedom. Bloody beastly, he said to Timmy Durant, summing up his discomfort at the world shown him at lunch time, a world capable of existing. There was no doubt about that, but so unnecessary, such a thing to believe in, Shaw and Wells and the serious six penny weeklies. What were they after scrubbing and demolishing these elderly people? Had they never read Homer, Shakespeare, the Elizabethans? He saw it clearly outlined against the feelings he drew from youth and natural inclination. The poor devils had rigged up this meager object. Yet something of pity was in him, those wretched little girls. The extents to which he was disturbed proved that he was already a gog, insolent he was and inexperienced, but sure enough the cities which the elderly of the race had built upon the skyline showed like brick suburbs, barracks, and places of discipline against a red and yellow flame. He was impressionable, but the word is contradicted by the composure with which he hollowed his hand to screen a match. He was a young man of substance. Anyhow, whether undergraduate or shop boy, man or woman, it must come as a shock about the age of 20. The world of the elderly, thrown up in such black outline upon what we are, upon the reality, the moors and Byron, the sea and the lighthouse, the sheep's jaw with the yellow teeth in it, upon the obstinate irrepressible conviction which makes youth so intolerably disagreeable. I am what I am and intend to be it, for which there will be no form in the world unless Jacob makes one for himself. The plumbers will try to prevent him from making it. Wells and Shaw and the serious six penny weeklies will sit on its head. Every time he lunches out on Sunday at dinner parties and tea parties, there will be the same shock, horror, discomfort, then pleasure, for he draws into him at every step as he walks by the river such steady certainty, such reassurance from all sides, the trees bowing, the gray spires soft in the blue, voices blowing and seeming suspended in the air, the springy air of May, the elastic air with its particles, chestnut bloom, pollen, whatever it is that gives the May air its potency, blurring the trees, gumming the buds, dobbing the green. And the river too runs past, not at flood nor swiftly, but clawing the ore that dips in it and drops white drops from the blade, swimming green and deep over the bowed rushes as if lavishly caressing them. Where they moored their boat, the trees showered down so that their topmost leaves trailed in the ripples and the green wedge that lay in the water being made of leaves shifted in leaf breaths as the real leaves shifted. Now there was a shiver of wind, instantly an edge of sky. And as Durant ate cherries, he dropped the stunted yellow cherries through the green wedge of leaves, their stalks twinkling as they wrinkled in and out, and sometimes one half-bitten cherry would go down redded to the green. The meadow was on a level with Jacob's eyes as he lay back, guilt with buttercups, but the grass did not run like the thin green water of the graveyard grass about to overflow the tombstones, but stood juicy and thick. Looking up, backwards, he saw the legs of children deep in the grass and the legs of cows. Munch, munch, he heard, then a short step through the grass, then again, munch, munch, munch, as they tore the grass short at the roots. In front of him, two white butterflies circled higher and higher around an elm tree. Jacob's off, thought Durant looking up from his novel. He kept reading a few pages and then looking up in a curiously methodical manner, and each time he looked up, he took a few cherries out of the bag and ate them abstractedly. Other boats passed them, crossing the backwater from side to side to avoid each other, for many were now moored, and there were now white dresses and a flaw in the column of air between two trees, round which curled a thread of blue, Lady Miller's picnic party. Still more boats kept coming, and Durant, without getting up, shoved their boat closer to the bank. Oh, groaned Jacob as the boat rocked and the trees rocked and the white dresses and the white flannel trousers drew out long in wavering up the bank. Oh, he sat up and felt as if a piece of elastic had snapped in his face. They're friends of my mother's, said Durant. So old Bow took no end of trouble about the boat. And this boat had gone from Falmouth to St. Ives Bay all round the coast. A larger boat, a 10-10 yacht, about the 20th of June, properly fitted out, Durant said. There's the cash difficulty, said Jacob. My people will see to that, said Durant, the son of a banker, deceased. I intend to preserve my economic independence, said Jacob stiffly. He was getting excited. My mother said something about going to Harrogate, he said with a little annoyance, feeling the pocket where he kept his letters. Was that true about your uncle becoming a Muhammadian, asked Timmy Durant? Jacob had told the story of his uncle Morty in Durant's room the night before. I expect he's feeding the sharks if the truth were known, said Jacob. I say, Durant, there's none left. He exclaimed, crumpling the bag, which had held the cherries and throwing it into the river. He saw Lady Miller's picnic party on the island as he threw the bag into the river. A sort of awkwardness, grumpiness, gloom came into his eyes. Shall we move on, this beastly crowd, he said. So up they went, past the island. The feathery white moon never let the sky grow dark. All night, the chestnut blossoms were white in the green. Dim was the cow parsley in the meadows. The waiter's eternity must have been shuffling china plates like cards from the clatter that could be heard in the great court. Jacob's rooms, however, were in Neville's court at the top, so that reaching his door, one went in a little out of breath, but he wasn't there. Dining in hall, presumably, it will be quite dark in Neville's court long before midnight, only the pillar's opposite will always be white in the fountains. The curious effect the gate has like lace upon pale green. Even in the window you hear the plates, a hum of talk too from the diners. The hall lit up and the swing doors opening and shutting with a soft thud. Some are late. Jacob's room had a round table and two low chairs. There were yellow flags and a jar in the mantelpiece, a photograph of his mother, cards from societies with little raised crescents, coats of arms, and initials, notes and pipes. On the table lay paper ruled with a red margin, an essay, no doubt, does history consist of the biographies of great men. There were books enough, very few French books, but then anyone who's worth anything reads just what he likes as the mood takes in with this extravagant enthusiasm. Lives of the Duke of Wellington, for example, Spinoza, the works of Dickens, the fairy queen, a Greek dictionary with the petals of poppies pressed to silk between the pages, all the Elizabethans. His slippers were incredibly shabby like boats burnt to the water's rim. Then there were photographs from the Greeks and a mezzotint from Sir Joshua, all very English. The works of Jane Austen, too, in deference, perhaps, to someone else's standard. Carlisle was a prize. There were books upon the Italian painters of the Renaissance, a manual of the diseases of the horse and all the usual textbooks. List list is the air in an empty room, just swelling the curtain, the flowers in the jar shift, one fiber in the worker armchair creaks though no one sits there. Coming down the steps a little sideways, Jacob sat on the window seat, talking to Durant. He smoked and Durant looked up the map. The old man with his hands locked behind him, his gown floating black, lurched unsteadily near the wall, then upstairs he went into his room. Then another who raised his hand and praised the columns, the gate, the sky, another chipping and smug. Each went up a staircase, three lights were lit in the dark windows. If any light burns above Cambridge, it must be from three such rooms. Greek burns here, science, there, philosophy on the ground floor. Poor old Huckstable can't walk straight. Softwoods too has praised the sky in night these 20 years and Cowan still chuckles at the same stories. It is not simple or pure or wholly splendid the lamp of learning, since if you see them there under its light, whether Rosetti's on the wall or Van Gogh reproduced, whether there are lilacs in the bowl or rusty pipes, how creasely they look, how like a suburb where you go to see a view and eat a special cake. We are the sole purveyors of this cake. Back you go to London for the treat is over. Old Professor Huckstable, performing with the method of a clock his change of dress, let himself down into his chair, felt his pipe, chose his paper, crossed his feet and extracted his glasses. The whole flesh of his face then fell into folds as the props were removed. Yet strip a whole seat of an underground railway carriage of its heads and old Huckstable's head will hold them all. Now as his eye goes down the print, what a procession tramps through the corridors of his brain, orderly, quick stuffing and reinforced as the march goes on by fresh runnels till the whole hall, dome, whatever one calls it, is populous with ideas. Such a muster takes place in no other brain. Yet sometimes there he'll sit for hours together, gripping the arm of the chair like a man holding fast because stranded. And then just because his corn twinges or it may be the gout, what execrations and dear me to hear him talk of money, taking out his leather purse and grudging even the smallest silver coin, secretive and suspicious as an old peasant woman with all her lies, strange paralysis and constriction, marvelous illumination, serene over it all rides the great full brow and sometimes a sleeper in the quiet spaces of the night you might fancy that on a pillow of stone he lay triumphant. Sopwith meanwhile, advancing with the curious trip from the fireplace, cut the chocolate cake into segments. Until midnight or later, there would be undergraduates in his room, sometimes as many as 12, sometimes three or four, but nobody got up when they went or when they came. Sopwith went on talking, talking, talking, talking as if everything could be talked. The soul itself slipped through the lips and thin silver discs which dissolve in young men's minds like silver, like moonlight. Oh, far away they'd remember it and deep in dullness gaze back on it and come to refresh themselves again. Well, I never, that's old Chucky. My dear boy, how's the world treating you? And in came poor little Chucky, the unsuccessful provincial. Stenhouse's real name, but of course Sopwith brought back by using the other everything, everything. All I could ever be. Yes, though next day, buying his newspaper and catching the early train, it all seemed to him childish, absurd. The chocolate cake, the young men, Sopwith summing things up. No, not all, he would send his son there. He would save every penny to send his son there. Sopwith went on talking, twining stiff fibers of awkward speech, things young men blurted out, plating them round his own smooth garland, making the bright side show. The vivid greens, the sharp thorns, manliness, he loved it. Indeed, to Sopwith, a man could say anything unless perhaps he'd grown old or gone under, gone deep when the silver discs would tinkle hollow and the inscription read a little too simple and the old stamp looked too pure and the impress always the same, a Greek boy's head. But he would respect still, a woman, dividing the priest, would involuntarily despise. Cohen, Erasmus Cowan, sipped his port alone or with one rosy little man whose memory held precisely the same span of time, sipped his port and told his stories and without book before him and toned Latin, Virgil, and Catalyst as if language were whine upon his lips. Only sometimes it will come over one. What if the poet strode in? This, my image, he might ask, pointing to the chubby man whose brain is, after all, Virgil's representative among us, though the body glutton eyes and as for arms, bees, or even the plow, Cowan takes his trips abroad with a French novel in his pocket, a rug about his knees and is thankful to be home again in his place, in his line, holding up in his snug little mirror the image of Virgil, all raid round with good stories of the dawns of Trinity and red beams of port. But language is whine upon his lips. Nowhere else would Virgil hear the like. And though as she goes sauntering along the backs old Miss Unfilby sings him melodiously enough, accurately too, she's always brought up by this question as she reaches Clare Bridge. But if I meet him, what should I wear? And then, taking her way up the avenue towards Noonham, she lets her fancy play upon other details of men's meeting with women which have never gotten to print. Her lectures, therefore, are not half so well attended as those of Cowan and the things she might have said in elucidation of the text forever left out. In short, face the teacher with the image of the taut and the mirror breaks. But Cowan sipped his port, his exaltation over, no longer the representative of Virgil. No, the builder, assessor, surveyor, rather, ruling lines between names hanging lists above doors, such as the fabric through which the light must shine if shine it can. The light of all these languages, Chinese and Russian, Persian and Arabic, of symbols and figures, of history, of things that are known and things that are about to be known. So that if at night far out at sea over the tumbling waves one saw a haze on the waters as city illuminated, a whiteness even in the sky, such as that now over the Hall of Trinity where there are still dining or washing up plates, that would be the light burning there, the light of Cambridge. Let's go round to Samine's room, said Jacob, and they rolled up the map having got the whole thing settled. All the lights were coming out round the court and falling on the cobbles, picking out dark patches of grass and single daisies. The young men were now back in their rooms. Heaven knows what they were doing. What was it that could drop like that? And leaning down over a foaming window box one stopped another hurrying past and upstairs they went and down they went until a sort of fullness settled on the court. The hive full of bees, the bees home thick with gold, drowsy, humming, suddenly vocal, the moonlight sonata answered by a waltz. The moonlight sonata tinkled away, the waltz crashed. Although young men still went in and out, they walked as if keeping engagements. Now and then there was a thud as if some heavy piece of furniture had fallen unexpectedly of its own accord, not in the general store of life after dinner. One supposed that young men raised their eyes from their books as the furniture fell. Were they reading? Certainly there was a sense of concentration in the air. Behind the gray wall set so many young men, some undoubtedly reading, magazines, shilling, shockers no doubt, legs perhaps over the arms of chairs, smoking, sprawling over tables and writing while their heads went round in a circle as the pen moved. Simple young men, these, who would? But there is no need to think of them grown old. Others eating sweets, here they boxed and well, Mr. Hawkins must have been mad suddenly to throw up his window and ball. Joseph, Joseph! And then he ran as hard as ever he could across the court while an elderly man in a green apron carrying an immense pile of tin covers, hesitated, balanced and then went on. But this was a diversion. There were young men who read, lying in shallow armchairs, holding their books as if they had hold in their hands of something that would see them through. They being all in a torment, coming from Midland towns, clergyman's sons, others read Keats. And there's long histories in many volumes. Surely someone was now beginning at the beginning in order to understand the Holy Roman Empire as one must. That was part of the concentration that would be dangerous on a hot spring night, dangerous perhaps to concentrate too much upon single books. Actual chapters, when at any moment the door opened and Jacob appeared, or Richard Bonomy reading Keats no longer, began making long pink spills from an old newspaper, bending forward and looking eager and contented no more but almost fierce. Why? Only perhaps the Keats died young. One wants to write poetry too, when to love. Oh, the brutes. It's damnably difficult. But after all, not so difficult if on the next staircase in a large room there are two, three, five young men all convinced of this, of brutality that is and the clear division between right and wrong. There was a sofa, chairs, a square table and the window being open, one could see how they sat, legs issuing here, one there crumpled in a corner of the sofa and presumably for you could not see him, somebody stood by the fender talking. Anyhow, Jacob, who sat astride a chair and ate dates from a long box, burst out laughing. The answer came from the sofa corner where his pipe was held in the air. Then replaced, Jacob wheeled around. He had something to say to that, though the sturdy red-haired boy at the table seemed to deny it, wagging his head slowly from side to side and then taking out his pen knife, he dug the point of it again and again into a knot in the table, as if affirming that the voice from the fender spoke the truth which Jacob could not deny. Possibly when he had done arranging the date stones, he might find something to say to it. Indeed, his lips opened, only then there broke out a roar of laughter. The laughter died in the air. The sound of it could scarcely have reached anyone standing by the chapel which stretched along the opposite side of the court. The laughter died out and only gestures of arms, movements of bodies could be seen shaping something in the room. Was it an argument, a bet on the boat races? Was it nothing of the sort? What was shaped by the arms and bodies moving in the twilight room? A step or two beyond the window, there was nothing at all except the enclosing buildings, chimneys upright, roofs horizontal, too much brick and building for a main night perhaps. And then before one's eyes would come the bare hills of turkey, sharp lines, dry earth, colored flowers and color on the shoulders of the women, standing naked-legged in the stream to be linen on the stones. The stream made loops of water around their ankles but none of that could show clearly through the swaddlings and blanketings of the Cambridge night. The stroke of the clock even was muffled as if entoned by somebody reverent from a pulpit as if generations of learned men heard the last hour go rolling through their ranks and issued it already smooth and time-worn with their blessing for the use of the living. Was it to receive this gift from the past that the young man came to the window and stood there looking out across the court? It was Jacob. He stood smoking his pipe while the last stroke of the clock purred softly round him. Perhaps there had been an argument. He looked satisfied, indeed masterly, which expression changed slightly as he stood there. The sound of the clock conveying to him, it may be, a sense of old buildings and time and himself the inheritor and then tomorrow and friends at the thought of whom in sheer confidence and pleasure it seemed he yawned and stretched himself. Meanwhile behind him the shape they had made whether by argument or not the spiritual shape, hard yet ephemeral as of glass compared with the dark stone of the chapel was dashed to splinters. Young men rising from chairs in sofa corners buzzing and barging about the room, one driving another against the bedroom door, which giving way in they fell. Then Jacob was left there in the shallow, armed chair alone with Masham, Anderson, Simeon. Oh, it was Simeon, the others had all gone. Julian, the apostate, which of them said that and the other words murmured round it? But about midnight there sometimes rises like a veiled figure suddenly woken, a heavy wind. And this now flapping through Trinity lifted unseen leaves and blurred everything. Julian, the apostate, and then the wind. Up go the elm branches, out blow the sails, the old schooners rear and plunge, the gray waves in the hot Indian Ocean tumble sultrally and then all falls flat again. So if the veiled lady stepped through the courts of Trinity she now drowsed once more all her draperies about her, her head against a pillar. Somehow it seems to matter. The low voice was Simeon's. The voice was even lower that answered him. The sharp tap of a pipe on the mantelpiece canceled the words. And perhaps Jacob only said hum or said nothing at all. True, the words were inaudible. It was the intimacy, a sort of spiritual suppleness when mine prints upon mine indelibly. While you seem to have studied the subject, said Jacob, rising and standing over Simeon's chair, he balanced himself, he swayed a little. He appeared extraordinarily happy as if his pleasure would brim and spill down the sides if Simeon spoke. Simeon said nothing. Jacob remained standing, but intimacy, the room was full of it, still, deep like a pool. Without need of movement or speech, it rose softly and washed over everything, mollifying, kindling and coating the mind with a lustre of pearl so that if you talk of a light of Cambridge burning, it's not languages only, it's Julie in the apostate. But Jacob moved. He murmured good night. He went out into the court. He buttoned his jacket across his chest. He went back to his rooms and being the only man who walked at that moment back to his rooms, his footsteps rang out, his figure loomed large. Back from the chapel, back from the hall, back from the library came the sound of his footsteps. As if the old stone echoed with magisterial authority, the young man, the young man, the young man back to his rooms. End of chapter three, recording by Amanda, Richmond, Virginia. Chapter four of Jacob's Room. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by James K. White. Jacob's Room by Virginia Wolfe. Chapter four. What's the use of trying to reach Shakespeare, especially in one of those little, thin paper editions whose pages get ruffled or stuck together with seawater? Although the plays of Shakespeare had frequently been praised, even quoted, and placed higher than the Greek, never since they started had Jacob managed to read one through. Yet what an opportunity. For the silly aisles had been cited by Timmy Durant lying like mountain tops almost awash in precisely the right place. His calculations had worked perfectly, and really the sight of him sitting there with his hand on the tiller, rosy gild, with a sprout of beard, looking sternly at the stars, then at a compass, spelling out quite correctly his page of the Eternal Lesson Book, would have moved a woman. Jacob, of course, was not a woman. The sight of Timmy Durant was no sight for him, nothing to set against the sky and worship, far from it. They had quarreled. Why the right way to open a tin of beef with Shakespeare on board, under conditions of such splendor should have turned them to sulky schoolboys none can tell. Tinned beef is cold-eating, though, and saltwater spoils biscuits, and the waves tumble and lullop much the same hour after hour, tumble and lullop all across the horizon. Now a spray of seaweed floats past, now a log of wood. Ships have been wrecked here, one or two go past, keeping their own side of the road. Timmy knew where they were bound, what their cargos were, and by looking through his glass could tell the name of the line, and even guess what dividends it paid its shareholders. Yet that was no reason for Jacob to turn sulky. The silly Isles had the look of mountaintops almost awash. Unfortunately, Jacob broke the pin of the primus stove. The silly Isles might well be obliterated by a roller sweeping straight across. But one must give young men the credit of admitting that, though breakfast-eaten under these circumstances is grim, it is sincere enough. No need to make conversation. They got out their pipes. Timmy wrote up some scientific observations, and what was the question that broke the silence? The exact time or the day of the month? Anyhow, it was spoken without the least awkwardness in the most matter-of-fact way in the world. And then Jacob began to unbutton his clothes and sat naked, save for his shirt, intending, apparently, to bathe. The silly Isles were turning bluish, and suddenly blue, purple, and green flushed the sea, left it gray, struck a stripe which vanished. But when Jacob had got his shirt over his head, the whole floor of the waves was blue and white, rippling and crisp, though now and again a broad purple mark appeared, like a bruise, or there floated an entire emerald tinge with yellow. He plunged, he gulped in water, spat it out, struck with his right arm, struck with his left, was towed by a rope, gasped, splashed, and was hauled on board. The seat in the boat was positively hot, and the sun warmed his back as he sat naked with a towel in his hand, looking at the silly Isles, which, confounded, the sail flapped. Shakespeare was knocked over board. And there you could see him floating merrily away with all his pages ruffling enumerably, and then he went under. Strangely enough, you could smell violets, or if violets were impossible in July, they must grow something very pungent on the mainland then, the mainland. Not so very far off, you could see cliffs in the cliffs, white cottages, smoke going up, and wore an extraordinary look of calm, of sunny peace, as if wisdom and piety had descended upon the dwellers there. Now a cry sounded, as of a man calling Pilchards in a main street. It wore an extraordinary look of piety and peace, as if old men smoked by the door, and girls stood, hands on hips at the well, and horses stood, as if the end of the world had come, and cabbage fields and stone walls, and coast guard stations, and above all the white sand bays with the waves breaking unseen by anyone, rose to heaven in a kind of ecstasy. But imperceptibly the cottage-smoke droops has the look of a morning emblem, a flag floating its caress over a grave. The gulls making their broad flight and then riding at peace seem to mark the grave. No doubt if this were Italy, Greece, or even the shores of Spain, sadness would be routed by strangeness and excitement, and the nudge of a classical education. But the Cornish hills have stark chimneys standing on them, and somehow or other, loveliness, is infernally sad. Yes, the chimneys and the coast guard stations and the little bays with the waves breaking unseen by anyone make one remember the overpowering sorrow. And what can this sorrow be? It is brewed by the earth itself. It comes from the houses on the coast. We start transparent, and then the cloud thickens. All history backs our pain of glass to escape as vain. But whether this is the right interpretation of Jacob's gloom as he sat naked in the sun looking at the land's end, it is impossible to say, for he never spoke a word. Timmy sometimes wondered, only for a second, whether his people bothered him, no matter. There are things that can't be said. Let's shake it off, let's dry ourselves, and take up the first thing that comes handy, Timmy Durant's notebook of scientific observations. Now, said Jacob, it is a tremendous argument. Some people can follow every step of the way and even take a little one six inches long by themselves at the end. Others remain observant of the external signs. The eyes fix themselves upon the poker. The right hand takes the poker and lifts it, turns it slowly round and then very accurately replaces it. The left hand, which lies on the knee, plays some stately but intermittent piece of march music. A deep breath is taken, but allowed to evaporate unused. The cat marches across the hearth rug. No one observes her. That's about as near as I can get to it, Durant wound up. The next minute is quiet as the grave. It follows, said Jacob. Only half a sentence followed, but these half sentences are like flags set on tops of buildings to the observer of external sites down below. What was the coast of Cornwall with its violet scents and morning emblems and tranquil piety but a screen happening to hang straight behind as his mind marched up? It follows, said Jacob. Yes, said Timmy, after reflection. That is so. Now Jacob began plunging about, half to stretch himself, half in a kind of jollity, no doubt, for the strangest sound issued from his lips as he furled the sail, rubbed the plates, gruff, tuneless, a sort of pezzan for having grasped the argument for being master of the situation, sunburnt, unshaven, capable into the bargain of sailing round the world in a 10-ton yacht, which, very likely, he would do one of these days instead of settling down in a lawyer's office and wearing spats. Our friend Mashaam, said to me, Durant, would rather not be seen in our company as we are now. His buttons had come off. Do you know Mashaam's aunt, said Jacob? Never knew he had one, said Timmy. Mashaam has millions of aunts, said Jacob. Mashaam has mentioned in Doomsday Book, said Timmy. So are his aunts, said Jacob. His sister, said Timmy, is a very pretty girl. That's what'll happen to you, Timmy, said Jacob. It'll happen to you first, said Timmy. But this woman I was telling you about, Mashaam's aunt. Oh, do get on, said Timmy, for Jacob was laughing so much that he could not speak. Mashaam's aunt, Timmy laughed so much that he could not speak. Mashaam's aunt, what is there about Mashaam that makes one laugh, said Timmy? Hang it all, a man who swallows his type in, said Jacob. Lord Chancellor, before he's 50, said Timmy. He's a gentleman, said Jacob. The Duke of Wellington was a gentleman, said Timmy. Keats wasn't, Lord Salisbury was. And what about God, said Jacob. The silly aisles now appeared as if directly pointed at by a golden finger issuing from a cloud. And everybody knows how portentous that sight is and how these broad rays, whether they light upon the silly aisles or upon the tombs of crusaders and cathedrals, always shake the very foundations of skepticism and lead to jokes about God. Abide with me, fast falls the eventide, the shadows deepen. Lord, with me abide, sang Timmy Durant. At my place we used to have a hymn which began, great God, what do I see and hear, said Jacob. Gulls rode gently swaying in little companies of two or three, quite near the boat. The cormorant, as if following his long strained neck in eternal pursuit, skimmed an inch above the water to the next rock. And the drone of the tide in the caves came across the water, low, monotonous, like the voice of someone talking to himself. Rock of ages, cleft for me. Let me hide myself in thee, sang Jacob. Like the blunt tooth of some monster, a rock broke the surface, brown, overflown with perpetual waterfalls. Rock of ages, Jacob sang, lying on his back, looking up into the sky at midday, from which every shred of cloud had been withdrawn, so that it was like something permanently displayed with the cover off. By six o'clock a breeze blew in off an ice field, and by seven the water was more purple than blue, and by half past seven there was a patch of rough gold beater's skin round the silly aisles, and Durant's face, as he sat steering, was of the color of a red lacquer box polished for generations. By nine all the fire and confusion had gone out of the sky, leaving wedges of apple-green and plates of pale yellow, and by ten the lanterns on the boat were making twisted colors upon the waves, elongated or squat as the waves stretched or humped themselves. The beam from the lighthouse strode rapidly across the water, infinite millions of miles away, powdered stars twinkled. But the waves slapped the boat and crashed with regular and appalling solemnity against the rocks. Although it would be possible to knock at the cottage door and ask for a glass of milk, it is only thirst that would compel the intrusion. Yet perhaps Mrs. Pascoe would welcome it. The summer's day may be wearing heavy. Washing in her little scullery, she may hear the cheap clock on the mantelpiece tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. She is alone in the house. Her husband is out helping Farmer Hoskin, her daughter married and gone to America. Her elder son is married too, but she does not agree with his wife. The Wesleyan minister came along and took the younger boy. She is alone in the house. A steamer, probably bound for Cardiff, now crosses the horizon, while near at hand one bell of a fox glove swings to and fro with a bumblebee for clapper. These white, cornish cottages are built on the edge of the cliff. The garden grows gorse more readily than cabbages. And for hedge, some primeval man has piled granite boulders. In one of these, to hold, and historian conjectures, the victim's blood, a basin has been hollowed. But in our time, it serves more tamely to seat those tourists who wish for an uninterrupted view of the Gernard's head. Not that anyone objects to a blueprint dress and a white apron in a cottage garden. Look, she has to draw her water from a well in the garden. Very lonely it must be in winter with the wind sweeping over those hills and the waves dashing on the rocks. Even on the summer's day, you hear the murmuring. Having drawn her water, Mrs. Pascoe went in. The tourists regretted that they had brought no glasses so that they might have read the name of the tramp steamer. Indeed, it was such a fine day that there was no saying what a pair of field glasses might not have fetched into view. 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 teasel, 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 teasel, 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 parlor, she prized mats, china mugs, and photographs, though the moldy 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 steamer's 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 poured 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 handsome cabs and footmen whistling for motorcars. 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 Gernard's head. Three seconds later Mrs. Durant wrapped 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. Durant, pointing the parasol with which she had wrapped 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. Durant, 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, Colonel, 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. Durant 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. Durant showed Mrs. Pascoe how bad the blight was on her potatoes. Mrs. Durant talked energetically. Mrs. Pascoe listened submissively. The boy, Colonel, knew that Mrs. Durant 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. Durant was saying. You won't have a potato left. Mrs. Durant was saying in her emphatic voice as they reached the gate. The boy, Colonel, became as immobile as stone. Mrs. Durant 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, Colonel, had only just time to swing himself up by the toe of his boot. The boy, Colonel, 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. Durant let the reins fall slackly. 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 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. Four words and backwards she cast her mind, as if the ruthless cottages, mounds of slag, and cottage gardens overgrown with fox-glove 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, Colonel, 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 treetops 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 pompous grass raised its feathery spears from mounds of green at the end of the meadow. A breath of water gleamed, already the convolvulus moth was spinning over the flowers. Orange and purple, nistersium 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 treetops, and were settling down for sleep when, far off, a familiar sound shook and trembled, increased, fairly dimmed 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 candlelight, 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 non-ham from the bone. Opposite him were hazy, semi-transparent shapes of yellow and blue. Behind them, again, was the gray-green garden, and among the pear-shaped leaves of the Escalonia 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. Durant, and Timothy Durant 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 Elliot agreed with us. But Miss Elliot, tall, gray-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. Durant 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. Durant 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 the girl, but the old man with the beard went on eating plum tarts. Mrs. Durant laughed and leaned back in her chair, as if indulging him. We put it to you, Mrs. Durant, said a young man with thick spectacles and a fiery mustache. I say the conditions were fulfilled. She owes me a sovereign. Not before the fish. With it, Mrs. Durant, said Charlotte, wilding. That was the bet. With the fish, said Clara, seriously. Begonia's mother, to eat them with this fish. Oh, dear, said Mrs. Durant. Charlotte won't pay you, said Timothy. How dare you, said Charlotte. That privilege will be mine, said the courtly Mr. Wartley, producing a silver case primed with sovereigns and slipping one coin on to the table. Then Mrs. Durant 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 Elliot and 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. Durant, 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. Durant. Well, just now, you're not old. Old enough to be Timothy's mother, they stopped. Miss Elliot was looking through Mr. Clutterbuck's telescope at the edge of the terrace. The deaf old man stood beside her, fondling his beard and reciting the names of the constellations. Andromeda, Bootes, Sedonia, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, murmured Miss Elliot, shifting the telescope slightly. Mrs. Durant and Charlotte looked along the barrel of the instrument pointed at the skies. There are millions of stars, said Charlotte, with conviction. Miss Elliot turned away from the telescope. The young men laughed suddenly in the dining room. Let me look, said Charlotte eagerly. The stars bore me, said Mrs. Durant, walking down the terrace with Julia, Elliot. I read a book once about the stars. What are they saying? She stopped in front of the dining-room window. Timothy, she noted. The silent young men, said Miss Elliot. Yes, Jacob Flanders, said Mrs. Durant. Oh, mother, I didn't recognize you, exclaimed Clara Durant, coming from the opposite direction with Elspeth. How delicious she breathed, crushing of her beena leaf. Mrs. Durant turned and walked away by herself. Clara, she called. Clara went to her. How unlike they are, said Miss Elliot. Mr. Wortley passed them, smoking a cigar. Every day I live, I find myself agreeing, he said as he passed them. It's so interesting to guess, murmured Julia, Elliot. When first we came out, we could see the flowers in that bed, said Elspeth. We see very little now, said Miss Elliot. She must have been so beautiful, and everybody loved her, of course, said Charlotte. I suppose Mr. Wortley. She paused. Edward's death was a tragedy, said Miss Elliot decidedly. Here Mr. Erskine joined them. There's no such thing as silence, he said positively. I can hear twenty different sounds on a night like this, without counting your voices. Make a bed of it, said Charlotte. Done, said Mr. Erskine. One the sea, two the wind, three a dog, four the others passed on. Poor Timothy, said Elspeth. A very fine night shouted Miss Elliot into Mr. Clutterbuck's ear. Like to look at the stars, said the old man, turning the telescope towards Elspeth. Doesn't it make you melancholy, looking at the stars? shouted Miss Elliot. Dear me, no, dear me, no, Mr. Clutterbuck chuckled when he understood her. Why should it make me melancholy? Not for a moment, dear me, no. Thank you, Timothy, but I'm coming in, said Miss Elliot. Elspeth, here's a shawl. I'm coming in, Elspeth murmured, with her eye to the telescope. Cassiopeia, she murmured. Where are you all? she asked, taking her eye away from the telescope. How dark it is. Mrs. Durant sat in the drawing-room by a lamp, winding a ball of wool. Mr. Clutterbuck read the times. In the distance stood a second lamp, and rounded sat the young ladies, flashing scissors over silver-spangled stuff for private theatricals. Mr. Wortley read a book. Yes, he is perfectly right, said Mrs. Durant, drawing herself up, and ceasing to wind her wool. And while Mr. Clutterbuck read the rest of Lord Lansdowne's speech, she sat upright without touching her ball. Ah, Mr. Flanders, she said, speaking proudly, as if to Lord Lansdowne himself. Then she sighed, and began to wind her wool again. Sit there, she said. Jacob came out from the dark place by the window where he had hovered, the light poured over him, illuminating every cranny of his skin, but not a muscle of his face moved as he sat looking out into the garden. I want to hear about your voyage, said Mrs. Durant. Yes, he said. Twenty years ago we did the same thing. Yes, he said. She looked at him sharply. He is extraordinarily awkward, she thought, noticing how he fingered his socks, yet so distinguished-looking. In those days, she resumed, and told him how they had sailed, my husband, who knew a good deal about sailing, for he kept a yacht before we married. And then how rashly they had defied the fisherman, almost paid for it with our lives, but so proud of ourselves. She flung the hand out that held the ball of wool. Shall I hold your wool, Jacob asked stiffly? You do that for your mother, said Mrs. Durant, looking at him again keenly, as she transferred the skein. Yes, it goes much better. He smiled, but said nothing. Elzbeth Sidon's hovered behind them with something silver on her arm. We want, she said. I've come, she paused. Poor Jacob, said Mrs. Durant quietly, as if she had known him all his life. They're going to make you act in their play. How I love you, said Elzbeth, kneeling beside Mrs. Durant's chair. Give me the wool, said Mrs. Durant. He's come, he's come, cried Charlotte Wilding. I've won my bet. There's another bunch higher up, murmured Clara Durant, mounting another step of the ladder. Jacob held the ladder, as she stretched out to reach the grapes high up on the vine. There, she said, cutting through the stalk. She looked semi-transparent, pale, wonderfully beautiful up there among the vine leaves, and the yellow and purple bunches, the lights swimming over her in colored islands. Geraniums and begonias stood in pots along planks. Tomatoes climbed the walls. The leaves really want thinning, she considered, and one green one spread like the palm of a hand, circled down past Jacob's head. I have more than I can eat already, he said, looking up. It does seem absurd, Clara began, going back to London. Ridiculous, said Jacob firmly. Then, said Clara, you must come next year properly, she said, snipping another vine leaf, rather at random. If, if a child ran past the greenhouse shouting, Clara slowly descended the ladder with her basket of grapes. One bunch of white and two of purple, she said, and she placed two great leaves over them where they lay curled warm in the basket. I have enjoyed myself, said Jacob, looking down the greenhouse. Yes, it's been delightful, she said vaguely. Oh, Miss Durant, he said, taking the basket of grapes, but she walked past him towards the door of the greenhouse. You're too good, too good, she thought, thinking of Jacob, thinking that he must not say that he loved her. No, no, no. The children were whirling past the door, throwing things high into the air. Little demons, she cried, what have they got? she asked Jacob. Onions, I think, said Jacob. He looked at them without moving. Next August, remember Jacob, said Mrs. Durant, shaking hands with him on the terrace where the fuchsia hung, like a scarlet earring behind her head. Mr. Wortley came out of the window in yellow slippers, trailing the times, and holding out his hand very cordially. Goodbye, said Jacob. Goodbye, he repeated. Goodbye, he said once more. Charlotte Wilding flung up her bedroom window and cried Goodbye, Mr. Jacob. Mr. Flanders, cried Mr. Clutterbuck, trying to extricate himself from his beehive chair. Jacob Flanders! Too late, Joseph, said Mrs. Durant. Not to sit for me, said Miss Elliot, planting her tripod upon the lawn. End of Chapter 4 Recording by James K. White, Chula Vista