Chapter VI: Part THREE: Part Three (1)

I

Judith, looking dazed, shut the door of the mistress’s room behind her, and after a quarter of an hour’s wandering, found her way back to her own room. She sat on a hard chair and said to herself: Independence at last. This is Life. Life at last is beginning; but rather because it seemed so much more like a painful death than because she believed it.

She surveyed the four walls in which her independence was to flower. They were papered in sage green with perpendicular garlands of white and yellow rosebuds. There was a desk, a kitchen chair, a cane table, a narrow iron bedstead behind a faded buff curtain; and a distinctive carpet. It was of a greenish-brown shade, striped round the edge with yellow and tomato-colour, and patterned over with black liquorice-like wriggles.

‘But I can’t _live_ in ugliness....’

A clamorous bell roused her from a state of apathetic despair; and she opened her door and crept along in the wake of the click of heels and the laughter of many voices.

This was Hall--huge, bare, full of echoes and hard light, whiteness and cold blue curtains ... blue and high like twilight above ice and snow when the full moon is rising.

‘I can always think of that and not mind if nobody talks to me....’

Down one wall, a row of black frocks and white aprons at attention; at the top of the room, High Table beginning to fill up: black garments, grey, close-brushed intellectual heads, serious thin faces looking down the room, one young one, drooping a little: piles of chestnut hair and a white Peter Pan collar. Crowds of dresses of all colours, shapes and sizes, all running about briskly, knowing where to go; a sea of faces bobbing and turning, chattering, bright-eyed, nodding and laughing to other faces, sure of themselves.

‘Margaret, come and sit here ... here ... here! Next to me! Sylvia, next to me.... Is there a place for Sylvia?...’

‘I am lost, lost, abandoned, alone, lost,’ thought Judith wildly and pounced for the nearest chair and clung to it. She was between two girls who stared at her, then looked away again. She bowed her head: the old terror of faces engulfed her.

There fell a silence. A voice like a bell went through the room, calling: _Benedictus, benedicat_. And then came a roar,--a scraping, an immense yelling that rose to the ceiling and there rolled, broke, swelled again without pause. Beneath its volumes she felt herself lost again; but nobody else appeared to have noticed it.

‘Can I pass you the salt?’ said her neighbour.

‘After you,’ said Judith earnestly.

‘Thanks.’

The conversation swirled on around her.

‘Who d’you think’s engaged? Three guesses.... Let’s look at the tombstone. Soup....... how classically simple ... just soup.... Take a hundred dirty dishcloths, soak them in hot water, add a few onions.... Dorothy’s bobbed her hair. It suits her. It doesn’t suit her.... My dear, who _is_ that girl next to you?... I’ve done six hours every day this vac.... May you be forgiven.... Well anyway, four regularly.... I’m going to _work_ this term, seven hours solid, no dances.... I’ve got to ... you should have heard the jawing I got from Miss Marsh because I only got a third in Part I.... Well I think that was jolly good: I shall think myself jolly lucky if I get the same.... Old Marsh has lost every human instinct.... D’you know Sibyl Jones has done ten hours every day for two months?... She’s _bound_ to collapse.... Third years ought to be more sensible at their age.... I _say_, I _do_ believe Miss Ingram’s dyed her hair. I’m _sure_ it’s a different colour.... D’you suppose she’s in _love_?... I knew a girl at Oxford who overworked most fearfully, and she woke up one morning and every hair on her head had come off and was lying on the pillow beside her, looking like a nasty practical joke. Rather a jar, wasn’t it? But she took to a wig, my dears, a flaxen waved wig and it was such an improvement that she left off her glasses and became quite flighty and took to powdering her nose as well, so it was a blessing in disguise; and then her Maths coach proposed to her and they got married, and all I wonder is whether he got a shock or whether she’d warned him, because I s’pose she takes it off at night and she’s as bald as an egg without it; but I suppose anyway baldness doesn’t matter in true love.... It’s a warning isn’t it?’

‘Pleasant idiocy,’ said Judith very quietly in the yell of laughter that followed. ‘Idiotic pleasantry.’

‘Did you speak?’ said the girl on her other side.

‘N--no.’

‘I suppose you’ve come up for a little visit? I wonder whose guest?...’

‘No, no. I’ve come up for good--I’ve just arrived. I came up a day late. I----’

‘You mean you’re a fresher?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you’re at the wrong table!’ said the girl, horrified. ‘There’s your table at the other end of the room. This is a second year table.’

‘Oh, dear! How awful! Does it matter? I couldn’t recognize anybody and nobody told me anything.... I don’t know a soul....’ She felt the shameful tears coming. Such a bad beginning....

‘Never mind,’ said the girl almost kindly. ‘It doesn’t matter for once. And you’ll soon get to know people. Isn’t there anyone here from your school?’

‘I’ve never been to school. This is the first time I’ve ever been away from home....’ Stupid weakening thing to say, inducing self-pity, bringing more tears.

‘Oh, really?’ said the girl, and added politely after a pause:

‘Do you know Cambridge?’

‘A bit. I came once with Da--my father. He simply adored it. He was always coming back. That’s why he wanted me to----’

‘Oh, really? How naice. I expect he’ll often be running up to see you then, won’t he?’

She turned her head away in silence. Never, never would he be running up to see her, to rescue her. Why had she mentioned him? He had vanished and left her stranded among creatures who dared to assume he was still alive....

Trips. Labs. Lectures. Dons. Vacs. Chaperons. The voices gabbled on. The forks clattered. The roof echoed.

‘Ugly and noisy,’ muttered Judith. ‘Ugly and noisy and crude and smelly....’ You could go on for ever.

There were eyes staring from everywhere, necks craning to look at her....

‘But I can abstract myself. I can ignore their rudeness....’

It was the moonlight filling the blue that made it so cold and pure. Above the icefields and the snow lay the cold translucent pastures of the air....

She studied the row of faces opposite her, and then more rows, and more, of faces. Nearly all plain, nearly all with a touch of beauty: here and there well-cut heads, broad white placid brows; young necks; white teeth set in pleasant smiles; innocent intelligent lovely eyes. Accepting, revealing faces they were, with no reserves in them, looking at each other, at things--not inward at themselves. But just a herd, when all was said: immature, untidy, all dull, and all alike, commonplace female creatures in the mass. But boring it was! If you could see Mariella’s clear thorough-bred face among them,--would that too get merged?

That was where she should be humbly sitting, among those quieter heads, right at the end. There was a light there, flashing about: the tail of her eye had already caught it several times. She looked more closely. It was somebody’s fair head, so fiercely alive that it seemed delicately to light the air around it: a vivacious emphatic head, turning and nodding; below it a white neck and shoulder, generously modelled, leaned across the table. Then the face came round suddenly, all curves, the wide mouth laughing, warm-coloured.... It made you think of warm fruit,--peaches and nectarines mellowed in the sun. It seemed to look at Judith with sudden eager attention and then to smile. The eyes were meeting her own, inquiring deeply.

‘Who’s that?’ said Judith excitedly, forgetful of her position.

‘Oh, one of the freshers. I don’t know her name.’

Her name, her very name would be sure to have the sun on it.

All at once Judith found courage to eat her pudding.

Another scraping of chairs, and they were all on their feet. Someone, highly flushed, flew to the door at the edge of the däis and wrenched it open, holding it back while the Mighty streamed slowly out. They were gone. The girl returned, even more highly flushed.

‘My dears! _Do_ you think they saw me giggling? Bunny, you _were_ a beast to make me giggle! Did I do it all right? I thought I’d never get it open in time. Miss Thompson looked _so_ severe: but did you see what a sweet smile I got from Miss Ingram? Oh, what an experience! Hold me up someone.’

Willing hands supported her limp form. The roar broke out again, pouring out of Hall along the corridors.

Judith went back to her room and sat by the window. Outside, the dusk was chill and deep. The treetops were all round her window. It was like being in a nest, to sit here with all the highest boughs swirling round the pane. If only the corridors did not echo with high voices and strange feet, if only you could forget the carpet, if only you could turn round and see Martin--(not Roddy--he was too unreal a memory to bring consolation) it might be possible to be comforted.

The feet were less frequent now, the voices quieter. What were the mysterious animals doing? The vast building was full of them, streaming in and out of their burrows, busy with their strange separate affairs.

Night, dropping across the flat fields of Cambridgeshire had blotted out a dim west slashed with fire. The tree trunks threw up their branches in a stiff black net and caught a few stars.

Now shut your eyes and see the garden at home, the summer sun wildly rich on the lawn, hear the hot whirr and pause of the mowing machine; smell the mown grass mixed with the smell of roses and pinks and lavender; see the white butterflies dancing above the herbaceous border; see Mamma, going slowly up the steps with a basket of sweet peas, pause and draw up the striped Venetian blind; because now it is evening; the sun is behind the massed, toppling dark-green luxuriance of the unmoving chestnut trees, has drained its last ray out of the rooms and left them warm, throbbing and wan. Now it is night. Go down to the river: they are all there, waiting in the dark for you.... Now there is only Roddy, coming close, just touching your shoulder, his head bent to look into your lifted one. Listen and hear him say: “Darling” ... of course it had been in fun. But his rich voice goes on whispering and repeating it.... His eyes drown again and again with yours....

Then all at once a far train-whistle roused her, cutting across this immense strangeness with a suggestion of ordinary familiar things; and Judith, faint with homesickness, sent towards it the desire of all her being to fly in its wake back to the life she knew....

Impossible to stay in this room. She opened the door and wandered down the corridor. At the far end was a great chatter of voices through a half-open door. Peering in she saw a cloud of cigarette smoke and a room full of girls sprawling in chairs and on the floor.

‘Who’s captain of hockey? Jane, of course you’re going to play hockey? And lacrosse.... Jane, I must say it’s topping to see you again.... Jane, your year looks a dull lot.... Who’s the one who planted herself at our table?... Oh, d’you think so? She’s got such a haughty expression ... sort of superior.... Perhaps she’s shy....’ A clear voice, high and extraordinarily resonant cut in. ‘She’s the most beautiful person I ever saw. I adore her.... Have some toffee someone.’

Judith half-saw half-imagined the flash of a head under the lamp as she fled past. If that voice ... that voice had the sun in it?

She went on downstairs, looked for the fifth time in the box labelled E for letters addressed to herself, knew for the fifth time there could be none, and went on again, wandering among the ground-floor corridors; desired in sudden panic to get back to her room and found she had lost her way.

A girl came out of a door carrying a hot water can. She wore a pink flannel dressing-gown.

‘Could you tell me,’ asked Judith. ‘How to get to a corridor called C?’

The girl looked at her closely and then beamed behind her glasses.

‘Oh, Miss Earle! Of course! We were up together for Scholarship Exams. Come in.’

Judith, helplessly conscious that this unpleasant dream was becoming a definite nightmare, followed her.

‘Sit down,’ said the girl. ‘I’m so glad you came to find me. You remember my name--Mabel Fuller.’

O God! The creature thought she had been singled out for the purpose of soliciting friendship....

‘I am so very glad you came to see me. I dare say you feel very strange?’

‘A little. But I’m quite all right, thank you.’

‘One feels very lonely at first. Never mind. Do you know any one else? No, nor do I.’ Her eyes glinted. ‘We must stick together till we’ve got our bearings. It’s a great thing to--I had a friend here once. She said the life was very jarring--such a whirl. We must try to make our little rooms as restful as possible. Do come to my room and work whenever you like. I always think it helps, don’t you, to have somebody else in the room concentrating.’

Earnestly her eyes beamed and glinted behind their glasses. Presumably she was kind and well-meaning, but her skin was greasy and pink was not her colour; and her lank hair smelt; and when she talked she spat. The colourless face had nothing of youth in it. Perhaps this was what really clever girls looked like.

‘I’ve spent to-day putting my room to rights,’ said Mabel, looking happily round her. ‘I do enjoy having a little corner of my own, my own things round me and.... To-morrow I must start work in earnest. How do you feel about your work? You’re bound to waste time at first unless you plan out your day methodically. You must come and work in here. I won’t disturb you. I’m a very hard worker myself. I shan’t mix much with the other students. She flushed. ‘I shan’t have time. And then of course there’s getting into Cambridge for lectures and.... Do you ride a bicycle? I find since I had pneumonia it tires me so.... We must go to lectures together at first--keep each other company....’

‘Are you reading English too?’ said Judith with sinking heart.

‘Oh yes.’ Mabel bit her finger nervously. ‘I didn’t manage to get a scholarship, you know. It was a disappointment. I was feeling very poorly and altogether.... I didn’t do myself justice, Miss Fisher said. She wrote such a nice letter and ... I was so set on coming here, it meant so much to me, I want to teach, you know--if my health permits.... I haven’t very good health ... so with what I’d managed to save and a little help from my mother ... she couldn’t afford it really but when she saw what it meant to me ... so I must do well ... I can’t disappoint her.... Are you preparing to earn your living?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Judith blankly.

‘You don’t look like it,’ said the other hurriedly with a furtive half-hostile glance at Judith’s clothes. ‘Most girls who come here have got to depend on their brains for a livelihood, so of course no one’s got a right to come here just to amuse themselves, have they? But I dare say you’re going to do very well. Miss Fisher told me this morning you’d done very good work for the scholarship. Oh yes. She quite praised you. I thought perhaps ... some of my notes and essays might be of use to you.... I take very full notes--my memory rather fails me sometimes and then.... I thought perhaps if we worked together we might--you know--help each other.... Another mind coming fresh to a subject.... We might....’

Her eyes betrayed her: brain-sucker, probing for new full-blooded life. Judith thanked her politely and rose to go.

‘Don’t hurry,’ said Mabel. ‘I’ll make you a cup of cocoa. I always think cocoa’s so nourishing.’

She busied herself with a saucepan over the fire and breathed stertorously through her nose. Her skin glistened unhealthily in the firelight. The room was very close, full of pink casement cloth, and china ornaments. She had not minded the carpet: she had decorated the room to suit it. On the mantelpiece stood many photographs of creatures stoutly whaleboned about the throat or heavily whiskered and collared according to sex; and alone on top of the book-case was set the incongruous lovely photograph of a girl with curly bobbed hair. The large eyes laughed at you mischievously: the face insisted on being looked at--a soft face, sensuous and wilful, with a wide bow of a mouth; the smile a trifle consciously sweet, but irresistible.

‘Oh, how pretty!’ said Judith delightedly.

‘My sister Freda,’ said Mabel. ‘Yes, she’s generally admired.’ She glanced suspiciously at Judith, as if to intercept the look of one saying incredulously: ‘_Your_ sister?’ But Judith only looked dreamy.

For which minded most: Mabel because Freda was so pretty, or Freda because Mabel was so repulsive? Or were they fond of each other, sharing confidences and joking about Freda’s lovers?... And was Freda vain and heartless or....

‘Here’s your cocoa,’ said Mabel. ‘Drink it hot.’

It was thick and syrupy, and Judith gave up after a few sips; but Mabel drank hers with obvious relish and ate doughnuts greedily out of a bag.

And did Mabel’s mother console her by saying she was proud to have a clever daughter at College?--because she couldn’t say, for instance, with any truth: ‘Your hair, Mabel, is of a much finer quality than Freda’s’--there was nothing of that sort to be said. Or did she pet Freda and neglect Mabel?...

‘I really must go now,’ said Judith. ‘Thank you very much. Good-night.’

‘Would you like to go for a walk with me on Sunday after church? We might go and hunt for pretty autumn leaves and berries. I always think they make a room look so bright....’

‘Thank you very much.’

College leaves, college berries, picked with Mabel....

Supposing you looked like Mabel, would you love beauty even more passionately, or be so jealous of it that you hated it?

Her eyes yearned at Judith. It was curious: they had in them a sort of avid glint--almost like the eyes of old men in railway-carriages.... And did Freda maliciously encourage her to wear pink flannel? And....

‘One thing more,’ she said. ‘I do hope you won’t allow yourself.... I mean we mustn’t allow ourselves to--to get into a foolish set. It’s so difficult to know at first.... There’s a set here, I’m told’--she paused, flushing unbecomingly to her forehead--‘there’s a set here that thinks a great deal too much about--about going out, and dancing, and--men--all that sort of silliness.... There, I’m sure you don’t mind my telling you. You can always come to me for advice.... I’m told the Mistress judges so by the people we go about with....

‘Good night, Miss Earle,’ she finished earnestly. ‘There’s your way: up the stairs and turn to the right. I’ll look out for you at breakfast to-morrow.’

Black Mabel. Haunted days and nights stretched out. No hope. No escape. Three years of Mabel settling down like a nightmare-bat, blotting out the light. Nobody but Mabel was going to speak to you for three years.

She passed two maids, flaxen-haired, red-cheeked, thick-featured Cambridgeshire types. They were turning out the lights in the corridors; and they smiled broadly at her. Maids were always nice, anyway.

‘Good night,’ she said shyly.

‘Good night, Miss.’

At the corner of the corridor she heard one remark to the other: ‘There’s a sweet faice.’

A little comforted, she came to her own room, undressed and dropped a few tears.

If he could have known how very unlike his Cambridge this place was! Too late now.... There was not a spire, not a light of Cambridge to be seen, not a whisper to be heard. Almost she could believe something Childe Rolandish had happened to it and it was gone; so that even its unseen nearness was no comfort.

‘Come in,’ she said in startled response to a tap at her door. Someone stood there in a dressing-gown, with bright hair rolling over her shoulders.

‘Oh!’ cried Judith in uncontrollable rapture. ‘I did hope....’

They gazed at each other, blushing and radiant.

‘I saw you at Hall.’

‘Yes. I saw you.’

‘I sat at the wrong table. It was awful.’

‘I wish you’d been sitting beside me.... What’s your name?’

‘Judith Earle. What’s yours?’

‘Jennifer Baird.’

Yes. Jennifer was the right name.

‘That’s a nice name.’

‘Why didn’t you come yesterday?’

‘I just forgot. I muddled the date.... Wasn’t it an awful beginning?’ They laughed.

‘I always make muddles, don’t you? I never remember dates and things.’

‘Nor do I.’

They laughed again.

‘I am thankful to find you, I can tell you,’ said Jennifer. ‘I was thinking I should be obliged to leave.’

‘So was I.’

They beamed at each other.

‘This is the third time I’ve come to find you. Where on earth have you been? I was afraid you’d locked yourself into the lavatory to cry or something.’

‘I’ve been....’ Judith laughed happily. ‘I’ve been with something awful.’

‘What?’

‘It’s called Mabel Fuller.’

‘My God! Fuller. Has she pounced on you already? She tried me this morning. It’s a funny thing,--she makes straight for the pretty ones. That sounds as if I meant I was pretty.’

‘So you are.’

‘I only meant I wasn’t so hideous as her and you’re lovely. She’s a vampire-bat. D’you know, I found out something: she’s twenty-seven at least. Think of it! I was rude to her. I suppose you weren’t. I should say you were much more well-bred than me.’

‘I wondered if she wasn’t a _tiny_ bit pathetic?’

‘God, no! What an idea! She hasn’t a notion how revolting she is. She actually prattled about dress to me,--wondering how she’d look in a jumper like mine. As if anything but an Invisible Cloak would improve her. I can’t stand people who spit when they talk.’

‘I do wonder,’ pondered Judith, ‘how people like that get produced from quite normal parents. It must be the working-out of some ancient and fearful curse.’

‘She’s an ancient and fearful curse anyway,’ said Jennifer gloomily. ‘I’ll tell you another thing. I believe she’s got sex-repression.’ She stared impressively at Judith; then broke into loud whistling. ‘Have you got a cigarette? Never mind.... I’ve just learnt to blow smoke-rings. I’ll teach you.’ More whistling. ‘It’s terrible to be so swayed by appearances. I’m afraid it’s a sign of a weak character. Ugly people rouse all Hell’s devils in me. And beautiful ones make me feel like the morning stars singing together. I want beauty, beauty, beauty.... Don’t you? Lovely people round me, lovely stuffs, lovely colours--lashions and lashions of gorgeous things to touch and taste and look at and smell.’ She flung her head back on its round white throat and took a deep sighing breath. ‘O colours!... I could eat them. I’m awfully sensuous--I look it, don’t you think? Or do I mean sensual? I always get them muddled; but I know it’s unladylike to be one of them. I say--why didn’t you speak to me after Hall?’

‘Oh, how could I? You had people all round you. I passed your room, and there were dozens of girls in it.’

‘Oh yes! Creatures I was at school with. I had a year in Paris after I left school. I think it developed me. I feel so much more mature than my contemporaries. I used to hunt at Chantilly. Have you ever done that?... They were all talking about you.’

‘I heard them say I had such a haughty expression. I haven’t, have I?’

‘Of course not. That’s women all over. I wonder if men are really nicer? I suppose you’re not engaged?’

‘Oh no!’

‘Nor am I. I don’t suppose I shall ever marry. I’m too tall,--six foot in my stockings. It’s awful, because I’m sure I shall always be falling in love myself--and I’m terrified of getting repressions. Are you in love?’

Judith thought of Roddy, blushed and said no.

‘Oh well, you’re too young I suppose. I’m twenty and two months--God!... Perhaps we shall both get engaged while we’re here. Me first, I hope.’ She chuckled deeply.

‘But we shan’t have time for anything except work,’ said Judith. ‘Mabel says we’re expected to do at least eight hours a day.’

‘Christ! Does she though! Just the sort of miserable immorality she would feed you up with. We’re in the world to enjoy ourselves, not to pass exams, aren’t we? Well then ... I have a prejudice against intellectualism. It leads to all sorts of menaces. Perhaps you don’t know.... I dare say you were brought up in blackest ignorance,--like me. But I’ve managed to overcome all obstacles in the way of enlightenment. Do you call innocence a virtue? I don’t. I call it stupidity.’ She talked on so rapidly that her words ran into each other and got blurred. Leaning heavily on the mantelpiece she continued. ‘Are these photographs your people? They look divinely aristocratic. You’re not an Honourable are you? You look as if you might be. Come and see my room. I say, let’s make our rooms absolutely divine, shall we?’

‘Mother told me to get whatever furniture and things I wanted,’ said Judith. ‘But what’s the good with that carpet?’

‘I’ve turned mine upside down,’ said Jennifer. ‘It’s an artistic buff now. Come and look.’

She led the way back to her room and opened the door upon a scene of chaos. Her clothes had been half-unpacked and left about in heaps. The room was full of smoke and reeked of stale Gold Flakes. Gramophone records, biscuits, apples, cake-knives, spoons, glasses and cups smeared with cocoa-sediment were strewn about the floor.

‘It isn’t as nice as I thought,’ said Jennifer. ‘The swine have feasted and rioted; _and_ left me to clear up after them. Christ! What a spectacle! Have an apple.’

She sat down in her trunk and looked discouraged.

‘I say, Judith Earle, do you think you’re going to enjoy College?’

‘Not much. It’s so ugly and vulgar.’

‘It is. And the students are such very jolly girls.’

‘Yes. And I’m frightened of them. I don’t know a soul. I’ve never in my life been with a lot of people and I don’t feel I shall ever get used even to the smell of them. It’s different for you. You’ve heaps of friends already.’

‘Nonsense. There’s no one. I’ve been screeching like a parrot all the evening, pretending to be awfully jolly too; but it strikes me as pretty grim....’ She brooded and whistled. ‘More than a little grim....’ She drooped, flickered out completely.

‘We’d--we’d better stick it out together,’ said Judith with a blush, fearful lest her suggestion should condemn her to Jennifer--for Mabel had said it and she had felt sick.

‘I should say we will. A thing’s much less bloody if you can talk about its bloodiness to someone else. Do you mind the word bloody? I noticed you flinched. It’s all a question of habit.’ She revived--‘Christ! To think only a few days ago I was stalking in Scotland with my angel cousins! It’s a very broadening thing for a young girl to have boy-cousins of her own age. I’m indebted to them for a lot of useful information--about sex and one thing and another. One of them gave me a bottle of champagne as a parting present. We’ve been drinking it--out of tooth glasses. Ugh! I dare say I’m a little tight. Don’t you think so? One’s got to do something.... I’d offer you some, but I’m afraid the swine finished it. The bottle’s in the cupboard.’ She climbed over a trunk, opened the cupboard door and looked in. ‘As I thought. Not a drop....’

There was a silence. She lit a cigarette, formed her full and vivid lips into an O and struggled painstakingly with smoke-rings.

The suddenness, thought Judith--the sureness, the excitement!... glorious, glorious creature of warmth and colour! Her blue eyes had a wild brilliance between their thick lashes: they flew and paused, stared, flew again.... Oh, Jennifer!...

‘Isn’t it awful,’ said Jennifer, ‘to have enlightened parents? They never ask you whether you care to be enlightened too, but offer you up from the age of ten onwards as a living sacrifice to examiners. And _then_ they expect you to be grateful. Hmm!’ She glowered at the photographs of a pleasant-looking couple on the mantelpiece. ‘God! I’m tired. Give me a hand out of this trunk, and I’ll get to bed.’

She struggled up, slipped off her dressing gown and stood revealed in striped silk pyjamas.

‘Too late for my exercises to-night,’ she said. ‘Are you keen on muscle? It’s more womanly not to be. I’ve over-developed mine. I can lend you a book called “How to Keep Fit” with pictures of young men in loin-cloths. You look wiry. Can you run?’

‘Yes--and climb----’ said Judith excitedly.

‘Oh!... I can’t imagine you doing anything except wander about looking innocent and bewildered. We might have some tests to-morrow!’

She went to the window, opened it wide and leaned out. Judith came and stood beside her. The night was still, dark and starry.

‘The grounds are beautiful,’ murmured Judith.

‘Yes--great trees----’ she murmured softly back. ‘And nightingales, I believe, in spring.’

‘Nightingales....’

‘Oh, there’s lots of things to look forward to,’ said Jennifer, turning round and smiling full at Judith. Their eyes sparkled and flashed: sympathy flowed like an electric current between them. She went on:

‘Oh Lord! Look at my bedroom. I’ll just clear a space and sleep among the wreckage. Won’t my gyp be pleased? It’s best to begin as I shall certainly go on, so I’ll leave it to her. She’ll like it as soon as I’ve won her heart.... Good night, Judith. I must tell you most people call me Jane.’

‘I shall call you Jennifer. It’s delicious,--different from anyone else. It’s like you.’

From the pillow Jennifer’s face broke into shy smiles, like a gratified child’s.

Judith busied herself quietly in the sitting-room, tidying the cups and knives,--enjoying the novel sensation of rendering service. After a few moments she called:

‘You wouldn’t suppose from their conversation that these girls are intellectual--would you?’

There was no reply. After a few more minutes she peeped into the bedroom. Jennifer’s peaceful flushed countenance and regular breathing greeted her astonished senses.

She was sleeping the sleep of the slightly intoxicated just.

2

The Indian summer stretched out through October that year. The closing harmonies were so complete that the gardens of the earth seemed but to repeat and enrich the gardens of the sky; and a day like a sunflower broadened to a sunset full of dahlias and late roses; with clouds above them massed, burnished and edged with bloom like the foliage of the trees of earth. Slowly at night the chill mists, bitter-sweet in smell, luminous beneath the moon, crept over and blotted all out.

The weeks drifted on. College became a pleasant habit. Lecturers ceased to be oracles. Work ceased to be important. Young men stared in lecture rooms and streets. There grew the consciousness of fundamental masculine apartness: of the other sex mysteriously calling to and avoiding it across an impassable gulf. Bookshops became places in which to wander and browse whole mornings. Towards the town, back from the town, the long road stretched out daily between the flat ploughed fields: the immense and crushing arc of the sky was swept forever with rich changes.

And the buildings,--the fall of sunlight and shadow on grey stone, red stone, the unblurred design of roofs and walls at dusk,--the buildings lifted their bulk, unfolded their pattern, glowed upon the mind by day and by night, breaking in upon essays, disturbing time-papers.

Jennifer’s shining head, curved cheek, lifted white throat lay against the blue curtain, just beyond the lamplight. Very late she sat there and said nothing, did nothing; made you lift eyes from the page, watch her, dream, wait for her smile to answer yours.

The garden, the river, the children next door were far away. Sometimes when you listened, there was nothing to be heard, not even Roddy; sometimes the bird-calls, the wet green scatters of buds, the flowering cherry-tree; sometimes the sunny mown lawn in stripes, the red rambler clouds heavy on the hot wall; sometimes the mists, the bloom on the clouds, the fallen yellow leaves in the dew; sometimes the rooks rocking in the blown treetops, the strong dark bewildering pattern of bare branches swirling across the sky, the tragic light crying out for a moment at sunset, haggard through torn clouds, then drowned again: sometimes these moved in their seasons through the garden so faintly behind your shut eyes they stirred no pang. Sometimes the silent group waiting in the darkness by the river had vanished as if they had been childish things put away.

Time flowed imperceptibly, casting up trifles here and there upon its banks.

3

King’s Chapel at Evensong. The coloured windows faded gradually out: only a twilight blue was left beneath the roof: and that died too. Then, only the double rows of candle-flames gave light, pointing and floating above the immemorial shadows of the floor and the shadows of benches and the shadowed faces of old men and youths. Hushed prayer echoed; and the long rolling organ-waves rose and fell, half-drowning the singing and setting it free again. All was muffled, flickering, submerged deep under cloudy water. Jennifer sat there motionless, wistful-eyed and unconscious, neither kneeling nor standing with others, but leaning rigidly back with eyes fixed and brilliant.

And afterwards came the emerging into a strange town swallowed up in mist. White surprising faces glimmered and vanished under the lamps. The buildings loomed formlessly in the dense sky, picked out by dimly-lit windows, and forlorn lanterns in the gateways. The life of Cambridge was thickly enshrouded; but under the folds you felt it stir more buoyantly than ever, with sudden laughter and talk dropping from the windows, weighing oddly in the air: as if the town were encouraging her children to sleep by drawing the curtain; while they, very lively at bedtime, went on playing behind it.

4

The lecture room window-pane was full of treetops--a whirl and sweep of black twigs on the sky. The room swam and shone in a faint translucent flood; and a bird called on three wild enquiring notes. These skies of February twilights had primroses in them, and floods; and with the primroses, a thought of green.

The small creakings, breathings and shufflings of the lecture room went on. The men: rows of heads of young looking hair; bored restless shoulders hunched beneath their gowns; sprawling grey flannel legs. The women: attentive rather anxious faces under their injudicious hats; well-behaved backs; hands writing, writing. Clods, all of them, stones, worse than senseless things.

The lecturer thought smoothly aloud, not caring who besides himself listened to him.

It was a situation meet for one of those paragraphic poems beginning

“_The solemn greybeard lecturer drones on_;”

and after a few more lines of subtly satirical description some dots and a fresh start:

“_Sudden a blackbird calls.... Ah sweet! Who heeds?_”

No one heeds. Attention to greybeards has made everyone insensible to blackbirds. The conclusion would develop neatly along those lines.

A year or two ago, how fervently you would have written, how complacently desired to publish that sort of thing! No regret could be quite so sickly as that with which one wished out of existence the published record of last year’s errors of taste.

‘My dear, he’s the sort of person who’d _make arrangements_ to have his juvenilia published after his death.’

That was the sort of condemnatory label Tony and his friends would attach, spreading their hands, leaving it at that.

‘Oh, Roddy, where are you? Why do you never come?’

He flashed into mind,--leaning idly against the mantelpiece, listening with an obscure smile to Tony’s conversation.

It was the sort of evening on which anything might happen. Excitement took her suddenly by the throat and made her feeble and tingling to her finger-tips.

The last of the light fell lingeringly on the grey stone window-frame. If the gold bloom lasted till you counted fifty, it would be a good omen. One, two, three, four and so on to twenty, thirty, forty ... crushing the temptation to count faster than her own heartbeats ... forty-five ... fifty.

It was still there, vanishing softly, but with a margin of at least another twenty to spare.

The ecstasy grew, making her stomach feel drained and helpless and beating in odd pulses all over her.

She bent over the desk, pretending to write, and making shaky pencil marks.

Somebody got up and switched on the light; and all at once darkness had fallen outside, and the window-pane was a purple-blue blank.

Roddy was in Tony’s room, leaning against the mantelpiece, quite near. She would pass Tony’s staircase on her way out: it was the one in the corner, facing the Chapel. She had seen his name every time she went by. Once she had met him coming out of the doorway, and he had looked through her; and once as she passed, someone in the court had shouted ‘Tony’! and he had leaned from his high window to reply.

Oh, this intolerable lecture!

Suddenly it was over. She came out and saw the bulk of King’s Chapel in the deep twilight with its row of buttresses rising up pale, like giant ghosts.

‘Oh, I’ve left my essay behind in the lecture room. I must go back. Don’t wait for me.’

She went back a few steps until the gloom had swallowed them, and waited alone in the dark court. There was a light in Tony’s window. Lingeringly she crept towards it and paused beneath it, stroking the wall. She lifted her head and cried speechlessly: ‘Oh come! Come!’

Nobody came and looked out through the uncurtained pane. Nobody came running down the stairs.

And if she did not go on quickly the bus would start without her.

Let it start and then walk up and knock on Tony’s door and say quite simply:

“I’ve missed my bus, so I’ve come to see Roddy.” Roddy would spring forward to greet her. All would be made right with Tony.

For a moment that seemed the clear, delightful inevitable solution.

But what would their faces hide from her or betray? What unbearable amusement, suspicion, astonishment, contempt?

And what was there to do on such a night save to say to Roddy: “I love you,” and then go away again? To dare everything, run to him and cry:

_I am Lazarus come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I will tell you all._

But what if he should answer with that disastrous answer:

_That is not what I meant at all,
That is not it, at all._

If he were to stare and coldly reply, with real speech:

‘Are you mad?’

Oh, but it should be risked!...

She stood still, hesitating, her hand pressing the wall, power and intoxication dying out of her. She felt the night cold and damp, and heard approaching footsteps, a torn fragment of laughter, a male voice raised for a moment in the distance.

She looked up once more at Tony’s window and saw that the curtains had been drawn; and she sprang away from the wall and ran towards the street in urgent flight from her wound, from the deliberate-seeming insult, the cruelty of drawn curtains.

The college bus was packed with girls. Heads were craning out in search of her.

‘Oh, Judy! There you are! We’ve been keeping the bus and keeping it. What on earth happened to you?’

‘I couldn’t get in. The room was locked. And then--Oh dear, I’ve run so! Is there room for me?’

‘Yes, here. Come on, Judy. Here. Come and sit down. You’re all out of breath. Come in.’

They welcomed her. Their little voices and gestures seemed to stroke and pat. They were so glad she had come in time, so considerate and kindly, so safe.

The bus rolled through the streets, past where the solemn lamps and the buildings ended, out on to the road where was only the enveloping night wind. The bus swayed and the rows of bodies swayed and the faces smiled faintly across at each other, amused at their own shaking and jerking; but all half-dreaming, half-hypnotized by the noise and the motion; all warm, languid, silent.

The noise and the motion and the swaying faces seemed eternal. Nothing else had ever been, would ever be. Of course Roddy had not been there: he had never been there at all.

5

Martin was a great athlete. He was always rowing, always training; but once or twice he borrowed a motor-bicycle and came out to tea, when Judith and Jennifer gave combined tea-parties to young men. On these occasions his face was very red and he looked too big for the room. He was quite silent and stared with concentration at Judith and Jennifer alternately; and seemed not to take to his fellow guests. He was undoubtedly a heavy young man to have at a tea-party--a bad mixer. Jennifer’s jokes, oaths and sallies brought no gleam to his countenance, and Jennifer was bored with him. Impossible to convince her that Martin was not a dull young man.

Martin dull?...

God-like in form he dived from the raft and swam over the river, swiftly, with laughter, water and sun upon his face. He sat among them all and smoked his pipe, looking kindly and comforting. You could depend on his eyes solicitously watching, his smile inviting you to come in, when all the others, neither kindly nor comforting, had shut the door and gone away. He was the one to whom Mariella chattered at her ease and made little childish jokes, calling him ‘darlin’,’ looking at him with candour and affection, sometimes even with a glint of mischief, as if she were a girl like any other girl; as if that something never fell across her clear face and obscured it. He shared a bedroom with Roddy; had a little screen at home, so he said, which Roddy had decorated, and given to him; he came walking up garden-paths with Roddy laughing and talking at his side.

In the darkness under the cherry-tree he bent his head and tried to speak, twisting his scrap of cherry, trembling with enchantment. He had been a thing to fly from, surprised, with beating heart.

But when Jennifer said he was a dull young man, it was very difficult to argue with her; for it seemed almost as if, transplanted alone to this new world, he were indeed quite dull, rather ordinary.

He came to tea three times. The last time Judith went with him down the stairs--his deliberate, assured masculine tread sounding significant, almost alarming in that house of flustered uneven foolish-sounding steps--and said good-night to him at the front door.

Fumbling with the lamps of his motor-bicycle he said:

‘Why can’t one ever see you alone?’

‘It’s not allowed, Martin. I can’t ask you to tea alone. And I can’t come to your rooms without a chaperon.’

‘Oh, damn the chaperon. I shan’t ask you to tea at all. Can’t you break a footling rule for anybody you know as well as me?’

She said deprecatingly that it was impossible.

‘You mean you won’t.’

That was what she meant. It was not worth while to break rules for dull Martin.

‘Who’s that Jennifer person you’re always with?’

‘A person I’m very fond of----’ She flared at his tone.

‘Never see you anywhere without her,’ he muttered.

‘Well you needn’t come to tea with me.’

‘Oh, I shan’t come again.’

‘I shan’t ask you.’

Silence fell. She looked up at the dark and starless sky; then at him still adjusting lamps, his head averted.

What were they about, parting in anger? How far indeed they were from the other world to mistrust and misunderstand so obstinately they had to quarrel!

Her heart misgave her suddenly at sight of the great building looming above her: there was no security in it, no kindness. Supposing when she went back Jennifer’s room were empty, and Jennifer, utterly weary of her, had taken the chance to escape, and were even now knocking at strangers’ doors, sure of her welcome?... How quickly without that form, that voice, all would crumble and dissolve and be but a lightless confusion! She should never have left the places where Martin stood by her side, listening, watching, waiting everywhere to wrap her in safety.

She said softly:

‘Martin, when’s Roddy coming to see you?’

‘He was here,’ said Martin, ‘a week or two ago. Staying with Tony Baring,’ he added. And then again: ‘Only for a night or two.’

Then finally trying in great embarrassment to soothe the pain which, even to his ears, cried out terribly in the silence and could not find words to cover it:

‘I scarcely saw him myself. He was very busy--so many people to see. He’ll be up again soon, I expect and then we must have a party.’

‘Oh yes, Martin.... You know, it’s very naughty of him. He said he’d come and see me.’

Her voice was thin and cheerful.

‘He’s very forgetful,’ said Martin helplessly.

‘I suppose,’ she suggested lightly, ‘he forgot even to ask after me.’

‘Oh no, he asked after you. I’m sure he did.’

She laughed.

‘Well I must go in.... Tell him when you write to him.... No, don’t tell him anything. But, Martin, you must come and see me sometimes, please, _please_,--in this hateful place. I feel I shall lose you all again. You know mother’s going to live abroad for a year or two? So I shan’t be there in the summer, next door. It’s awful. She let the house without telling me. What shall I do without it? Please come and see me. Or listen, I tell you what: it doesn’t seem to work somehow, your coming here. I can’t talk to you and I feel I don’t know you; but when the days get longer we’ll go for a long walk together, miles and miles. Shall we? Remember!’

‘Rather!’

He was happy again.

She called after him:

‘And, Martin, I’m sorry I was cross.’

‘My fault,’ came his ringing cheerful voice; and his engine started and he departed with a roar and a rush.

Alone in the dark she stood still and contemplated the appalling image of Roddy risen up again, mockingly asserting that only he was real; that his power to give himself or withhold himself was as the power of life and death.

It was urgent, now, to find Jennifer quickly. She was in her room, lying on the floor, staring at the flicker of firelight over her yellow velvet frock.

‘Oh, Jennifer!’

Judith sank down beside her, burying her face in her lap.

‘Darling.’

‘I’m not very happy to-night. It’s a mood. I think I don’t feel very well. And the night seems so sad and uneasy, with this wind. Don’t you feel it?’

Jennifer put out her hands and clasped them round Judith’s face, gazing at her sombrely.

‘What has he said to you?’ she whispered.

‘Who?’

‘That Martin.’

‘Nothing. It’s nothing to do with him.’

‘You love somebody, I think. Who is it you love?’

‘I love nobody.’

Jennifer must never never know, suspect, dream for a moment....

‘You mustn’t love anybody,’ said Jennifer. ‘I should want to kill him. I should be jealous.’ Her brooding eyes fell heavily on Judith’s lifted face. ‘I love you.’

And at those words, that look, Roddy faded again harmlessly: Jennifer blinded and enfolded her senses once more, and only Jennifer had power.

* * * * *

When the longer days came and Martin wrote to ask her to come for a walk one Sunday, she had another engagement and regretfully refused; and after that he wrote to tell her to bring a friend to a river picnic with him and another young man. She brought Jennifer; and Jennifer flirted broadly with the other young man; and the picnic was not a success.

After that the year closed without sight or sign of him; and she forgot to care.

6

Gradually Judith and Jennifer drew around them an outer circle of about half a dozen; and these gathered for conversation in Jennifer’s room every evening. That untidy luxuriant room, flickering with firelight, smelling of oranges and chrysanthemums, was always tacitly chosen as a meeting-place; for something of the magnetism of its owner seemed to be diffused in it, spreading a glow, drawing tired heads and bodies there to be refreshed.

Late into the night they sat about or lay on the floor, smoked, drank cocoa, ate buns, discussed--earnestly, muddle-headedly--sex, philosophy, religion, sociology, people and politics; then people and sex again. Judith sat in a corner and watched the firelight caress and beautify their peaceful serious faces; talked a great deal suddenly now and then, and then was silent again, dreaming and wondering.

Even the most placid and commonplace faces looked tragic, staring into the fire, lit by its light alone. They were all unconscious; and she herself could never be unconscious. Around her were these faces, far away and lost from themselves, brooding on nothing; and there was she, as usual, spectator and commentator, watching them over-curiously, ready to pounce on a passing light, a flitting shade of expression, to ponder and compare and surmise; whispering to herself: ‘Here am I watching, listening. Here are faces, forms, rooms with their own life, noise of wind and footsteps, light and shadow. What is this mystery?...’ And even in her futile thoughts never quite stepping over the edge and staring mindlessly and being wholly unaware.

They broke up at last with sighs and yawns, lingered, drifted away little by little. Judith was left alone with Jennifer.

‘One more cigarette,’ she suggested.

‘Well, just one.’

Jennifer let down her hair and brushed it out, holding it along her arm, watching it shimmer in the fire-light with an engrossed stare, as if she never could believe it was part of her.

* * * * *

Always Jennifer. It was impossible to drink up enough of her; and a day without her was a day with the light gone.

Jennifer coming into a room and pausing on the threshold, head up, eyes wide open, darting round, dissatisfied until they found you. That was an ever fresh spring of secret happiness. Jennifer lifting you in her arms and carrying you upstairs, because she said you looked tired and were such a baby and too lovely anyway to walk upstairs like other people.

Jennifer basking in popularity, drawing them all to her with a smile and a turn of the head, doing no work, breaking every rule, threatened with disgrace, plunged in despair; emerging the next moment new-bathed in radiance, oblivious of storm and stress.

Jennifer dispensing her hospitality with prodigal and careless ease, recklessly generous in public and in secret, flashing the glow of her magnetism suddenly into unlit and neglected lives, allowing them to get warm for a little, and then light-heartedly forgetting them. But never forgetting Judith--or not for long; and coming back always to sit with her alone, and drop all masks and love her silently, watchfully with her eyes.

Jennifer singing Neapolitan folk-songs to a be-ribboned guitar. Where she had picked up the airs, the language, the grace and fascination of her manner, no one knew. But when she sat by the window with bright streamers falling over her lap, singing low to her soft accompaniment, then, each time, everyone fell madly in love with her.

Jennifer chattering most when she was tired, or depressed, her words tripping over each other, her absurd wit sparkling, her laugh frequent and excited: so silent, so still when she was happy that she seemed hypnotized, her whole consciousness suspended to allow the happiness to flow in.