PART THREE

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

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

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:

But what if he should answer with that disastrous answer:

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.

Jennifer looking shattered, tortured after a few hours spent by mistake over coachings and time-papers in stuffy rooms; starting up in the end with a muttered: “O God, this place!...” wrenching open the door and rushing downstairs, oblivious of all but the urgency of her mood. From the window you could see her in the grounds, running, running. Soon the trees hid her. She was tramping over the ploughed fields, her cheeks glowing, her hair like a light against the dark hedges. She was going, alone, tensely, over the long fields. What was she thinking of? She had her evasions. No good to ask her: her eyes would fly off, hiding from you. She would not let herself be known entirely.

By Judith’s shadowy side ran the hurrying flame of Jennifer; and from all that might give her pause, or cloud her for a moment Jennifer fled as if she were afraid.

The lonely midnight clouded her. Jennifer was afraid of the dark.

Was it that people had the day and the night in them, mixed in varying quantities? Jennifer had the strength of day, and you the strength of night. By day, your little glow was merged in her radiance; but the night was stronger, and overcame her. You were stronger than Jennifer in spite of the burning life in her. The light hid the things for which you searched, but the darkness and the silence revealed them. All your significant experiences had been of the night. And there, it was suddenly clear, was the secret of the bond with Roddy. He too had more shadow in him than sun. “Chevalier de la lune” that was he—“Que la lumiere importune”—ah! yes! “Qui cherche le coin noir”—yes, yes—“Qui cherche le coin noir.” Some time—it did not matter when, for it was bound to happen—he would say in the dark “I love you.”

Meanwhile there was Jennifer to be loved with a bitter maternal love, because she was afraid. And because, some day, she might be gone. For Jennifer said “I love you” and fled away. You cried “Come back!” and she heard and returned in anguish, clasping you close but dreading your dependence. One day when you most needed her, she might run away out of earshot, and never come back.

But there was value in impermanence, in insecurity; it meant an ache and quickening, a perpetual birth; it meant you could never drift into complacence and acceptance and grow old.

There was Mabel, drifting into Judith’s life when conscience pricked and being joyfully dismissed again when the exigencies of duty seemed satisfied. There were little notes from Mabel found, with a sinking feeling, among her letters.

Dear J.,

Would you care to come to church with me on Sunday? I shall be ready at 10.15. I do hope you will come this week.

Yrs. M.F.

Dear Judith,

I thought you did not look quite yourself at lunch to-day. If there is anything worrying you, perhaps I might help you? Or if you are tired, come and rest in my armchair. I shall be working and will not disturb you.

Yours Mabel.

P.S. It’s all this rushing about that wears you out and makes you unfit for work.

M.F.

Mabel wrote her advice now, more often than she dared speak it.

Mabel, always pathetic, so that you could never entirely disregard her; always grotesque and untouched by charm so that it was impossible to think of her or look at her without revulsion; so that the whole thing was a tedious and barren self-discipline.

Mabel little by little relinquishing the effort to draw Judith into her life and desperately endeavoring to fit herself into Judith’s: chattering to other girls, trying to be amused by their jokes, to share their enthusiasms and illusions; pretending to have a gay home-life, full of interesting friends and fun; pretending to laugh at the thought of work and to treat lightly that nightmare of the Tripos which crushed her to the earth.

Once or twice Judith tried to draw her into the evening circle, explaining her loneliness, appealing beforehand for her pathos.... But it was no good. She was of another order of beings,—dreary and unadaptable. And Jennifer, with a wicked light in her eye, spoke loudly and with malicious irreverence of dons, the clergy and the Bible; and mentioned the body with light-hearted frankness; and Judith felt ashamed of herself for thinking Jennifer funny.

Mabel striving doggedly to believe that Jennifer was in the nature of an illness from which Judith would recover by careful treatment, then striving to ignore the importance of the relationship—staking out an exclusive claim in Judith by references suggestive of a protective intimacy.

‘Now, now! Pale cheeks! What will your mother say, I’d like to know, if I let you go home looking like this? I shall have to come and put you to bed myself.’

And there followed the flush and the hungry gleam while awkwardly she touched Judith’s cheek.

Mabel at long last voluntarily dropping out of all the places into which she had tried to force herself, going back without a word to her solitary room and her doughnuts. There were no more little notes rearing unwelcome heads in the letter-box. She asked nothing.

From the window late at night Judith could see her lamp staring with a tense wan hopeless eye across the court. In the midst of talk and laughter with Jennifer, she saw it suddenly and knew that Mabel was sitting alone, hunched over note-books and dictionaries, breathing stertorously through her nose hour after hour, dimly hoping that her uncurtained window might attract Judith’s attention, persuade her to look in and say good-night.

‘Oh, Jennifer, I won’t be five minutes. I must just go and see Mabel. It’s awful. You don’t know. She expects me; and she’ll sit up all night working if I don’t go.’

‘Tell her about the young lady of Bute with my love and a kiss,’ said Jennifer in the loud voice edged with brutality which she reserved for Mabel. ‘And say the mistress is very disappointed in her because she’s discovered she doesn’t wear corsets. She’s going to speak about it publicly to-morrow night because it’s very immoral. And ask her what will her mother say if you let her go home with all those spots on her face.’

Judith escaped, laughing, ran down the dark stairs to Mabel’s room and tapped.

‘Come in.’

It was clear from her voice she had been alert at the sound of the known footsteps. She raised a pallid face that tried for a moment to begrudge its gladness and preserve a stiffness.

‘Now, Mabel, I’m come to put you to bed. I like all your talk of looking after me. It’s you who need it. What do you suppose you’ll feel like to-morrow if you work any more? Come on now.’

That was the way she loved to be talked to. Judith filled her hot-water bottle and made cocoa, while with laborious modesty she donned her flannel nightdress with its feather-stitched collar; and pouted coyly and happily, like any other girl, because Judith was such a dragon.

Then she leaned back in her chair with the work-lines in her face smoothing out, and yawned contentedly and talked of little intimate things, giving them to Judith without reserve, as Judith gave hers to Jennifer—suddenly, pitifully like any other girl.

These were her happy compensating moments: they made her think for a while that the friendship was rare and firm.

How easy it was, thought Judith, to permit her to enjoy your incongruous presence; to step right into her world and close the gates on your own so fast that no chill air from it might breathe against her security! Alone with her like this, no lapse of taste on her part ruffled the nerves. You accepted her and let her reveal herself; and she was, after all, interesting, human, gentle, and simple. There was nothing—this time you must remember—nothing grotesque or ridiculous to report to Jennifer afterwards, hatefully betraying and mocking....

She spoke of her life in the narrow church-bound village home; her future: she would teach, and so have her own little independent place in the world. She didn’t think she was the marrying sort; but you never knew. Independence was what she craved: to support herself and be beholden to no one. Only she must pass well: (and her eyes would wander haggardly to the books)—It all depended on her health—she’d never enjoyed very good health. She always thought if she felt better she wouldn’t forget so. It made work very hard. Freda had always been the strong one. Everything came easy to Freda. Everyone admired and petted her: she was getting so spoilt, and extravagant too. She wouldn’t go so far as to say she and Freda had much in common, but you couldn’t help but love her in spite of all her naughtiness. And the quick way she had of answering back! She recited some of Freda’s quick answers, giggling like any other girl.

There was a curate who had coached her in Greek and Latin. He was a wonderful man, a real saint: not like any one else at all, young, a beautiful face and such eyes. Once he had come to tea with her, and they had had a wonderful talk, just the two of them. Freda had been out. It really seemed as if he looked on her as a friend. She hoped so.... He had helped her.

Judith listened, asked questions, sympathized, cheered her with offers of notes and essays; tucked her into bed with an effort at motherliness; and flew with a light heart back to Jennifer.

The curate ... at all costs, she must not tell Jennifer about the curate.

7

The long days of May stretched out before Judith and Jennifer. Each day was a fresh adventure in the open air, and work an unimportant and neglected nuisance. For weeks the weather remained flawless. Life narrowed to a wandering in a green canoe up small river-channels far from the town, with Jennifer paddling in wild bursts between long periods of inaction. To all Judith’s offers of help she answered firmly that a woman should never depart from her type.

They landed finally and made ready to bathe.

‘Off, off, you lendings!’ cried Jennifer. ‘Do you know, darling, that comes home to me more than anything else in all Shakespeare? I swear, Judith, it seems much more natural to me to wear no clothes.’

She stood up, stretching white arms above her head. Her cloud of hair was vivid in the blue air. Her back was slender and strong and faultlessly moulded.

‘Glorious, glorious Pagan that I adore!’ whispered the voice in Judith that could never speak out.

Beside Jennifer she felt herself too slim, too flexible, almost attenuated.

‘You are so utterly lovely,’ Jennifer said, watching her.

They swam in cool water in a deep circular pool swept round with willows, and dried themselves in the sun.

They spent the afternoon in the shade of a blossoming may bush. All round them the new green of the fields was matted over with a rich and solid layer of buttercup yellow. Jennifer lay flat on her back with the utter relaxed immobility of an animal, replenishing her vitality through every nerve.

Slowly they opened books, dreamed through a page, forgot it at once, laid books aside; turned to smile at each other, to talk as if there could never be enough of talking; with excitement, with anxiety, as if to-morrow might part them and leave them for ever burdened with the weight of all they had had to tell each other.

Judith crept closer, warming every sense at her, silent and utterly peaceful. She was the part of you which you never had been able to untie and set free, the part that wanted to dance and run and sing, taking strong draughts of wind and sunlight; and was, instead, done up in intricate knots and overcast with shadows; the part that longed to look outward and laugh, accepting life as an easy exciting thing; and yet was checked by a voice that said doubtfully that there were dark ideas behind it all, tangling the web; and turned you inward to grope among the roots of thought and feeling for the threads.

You could not do without Jennifer now.

The sun sank, and the level light flooded the fields and the river. Now the landscape lost its bright pure definitions of outline, its look as of a picture embroidered in brilliant silks, and veiled its colours with a uniform pearl-like glow. A chill fell and the scent of May grew troubling in the stillness. They turned the canoe towards home.

Nearer the town, boats became more frequent. Gramophones clamoured from the bowels of most of them; and they were heavily charged with grey-flannelled youth. Jennifer, observing them with frank interest, pointed out the good-looking ones in a loud whisper; and all of them stared, stared as they passed.

Above the quiet secretly-stirring town, roofs, towers and spires floated in a pale gold wash of light. What was the mystery of Cambridge in the evening? Footfalls struck with a pang on the heart, faces startled with strange beauty, and every far appearing or disappearing form seemed significant.

And when they got back to College, even that solid red-brick barrack was touched with mystery. The corridors were long patterns of unreal light and shadow. Girls’ voices sounded remote as in a dream, with a murmuring rise and fall and light laughter behind closed doors. The thrilling smell of cowslips and wall-flowers was everywhere, like a cloud of enchantment.

In Jennifer’s room, someone had let down the sun-blind, and all was in throbbing shadow. Her great copper bowl was piled, as usual, with fruit, and they ate of it idly, without hunger.

‘Now a little work,’ said Judith firmly. ‘Think! only three weeks till Mays....’

But it was impossible to feel moved.

Jennifer, looking childish and despondent, sat down silently by the window with a book.

Judith wrote on a sheet of paper:

Tall oaks branch-charmèd by the earnest stars; and studied it. That was a starry night: the sound of the syllables made stars prick out in dark treetops.

Under it she wrote:

What a lot there were for the sea and the seashore!... The page became fuller.

Ah, that said it all....

The lines came flocking at random.

Ah sunflower!... Where were they—the old gardens of the sun where my sunflower wished to go? They half unfolded themselves at the words ...

O mors quam amara est memoria tua homini pacem habenti in substantiis suis....

Nox est perpetua una dormienda.

There were so many tumbling and leaping about in your head you could go on for ever....

Now to study them. What did it all mean? Was there any thread running through them with which to make a theory? Anybody could write down strings of quotations,—but a student of English literature was expected to deal in theories. It was something to do with the sound ... the way sound made images, shell within shell of them softly unclosing ... the way words became colours and scents ... and the surprise when it happened, the ache of desire, the surge of excitement, the sense of fulfilment, the momentary perception of something unknowable.... Some sort of truth, some answer to the question: What is poetry?... No it was no good. But it had been very enjoyable, writing things down like that and repeating them to yourself.

Jennifer was half asleep with her head upon the window-sill. The bowl of fruit burned in the dimness. How like Jennifer was her room! Yellow painted chairs, a red and blue rug on the hearth, cowslips in coloured bowls and jars, one branch of white lilac in a tall blue vase; the guitar with its many ribbons lying on the table; a silken Italian shawl, embroidered with great rose and blue and yellow flowers flung over the screen: wherever you looked colour leapt up at you; she threw colour about in profuse disorder and left it. Her hat of pale green straw with its little wreath of clover lay on the floor. Nobody else had attractive childish hats like hers. A wide green straw would remind you of Jennifer to the end of your life; and beneath it you would see the full delicious curve of her cheek and chin, her deep-shadowed eyes, her lips that seemed to hold all life in their ardent lines.

She turned her head and smiled sleepily.

‘Hullo!’ said Judith. ‘Haven’t we been quiet? I’ve done such a lot of work.’

‘I’ve done none. I couldn’t remember the difference between ethics and æsthetics. What rot it all is!... Now listen and we’ll hear a nightingale. He’s tuning up.’

They leaned out of the window.

The icy aching flute in the cedar called and called on two or three notes, uncertain, dissatisfied; then all at once found itself and bubbled over in rich and complicated rapture.

Jennifer was listening, tranced in her strange immobility, as if every other sense were suspended to allow her to hear aright.

She roused herself at last as Judith bent to kiss her good night.

‘Good night my—darling—darling—’ she said.

They stared at each other with tragic faces. It was too much, this happiness and beauty.

The end of the first year.

8

The next moment so it seemed, the soft and coloured Autumn days were there again; the corridors, the echoing steps, the vast female yell of voices in Hall, the sense of teeming life in all the little rooms, behind the little closed doors—all these started again to weave their strange timeless dream; and the second year had begun.

Midway through the term came Martin’s letter.

Dear Judith,

Roddy is in Cambridge for two nights, staying with Tony. He wants to see you. Will you come to tea with me to-morrow at 4.30? I am to tell you he will never forgive you (a) if you don’t come (b) if you come with a chaperon. He says that chance alone prevented him from being your bachelor Uncle; and that I myself was a maiden aunt from the cradle. So please come.

Martin.

Dear Martin,

Bachelor uncles are notorious; and curious things are apt to happen to strictly maiden aunts as all we enlightened moderns know. But an aunt and uncle bound by holy matrimony are considered safe (as safety goes in this world) and I have notified the authorities of their brief presence in the university and am cordially permitted to wait on them at tea to-morrow at 4.30.

Judith.

Judith looked around Martin’s room. It was untidy and rather dirty, with something forlorn and pathetic and faintly animal about it, like all masculine rooms. It made you want to look after him. Men were helpless children; it was quite true. You might have known Martin’s room would give you a ridiculous pull at the heart.

‘I’m afraid things are in a bit of a mess,’ said Martin, blowing cigarette ash off the mantelpiece into the fire.

He was smoking an enormous pipe. His face was red. His great form looked lumbering and shapeless in an ancient tweed coat and a pair of voluminous grey flannel trousers.

‘How are you, Judith?’ His brown eye fixed itself on her. He was very shy.

‘I’ve been ill, Martin.’

‘Oh!...’ He looked troubled and embarrassed. ‘Did you—did you have a decent doctor?’

‘Oh yes. It was almost pneumonia, but not quite.’

‘I didn’t know you’d been ill....’

‘You haven’t been to see me for ages, Martin.’

‘I know. I’ve been so busy.’ Violently he blew the ash about. What a shame to pretend to reproach him. He was obviously overcome.... ‘And I didn’t think you wanted.... I suppose you’re all right again now?’

Footsteps sounded outside on the stair. Judith collected herself and sat rigid. The door opened and Roddy, smiling, eager, debonair, came into the room.

‘Hullo, Judy! Marvellous to see you.’

‘Roddy!’

He stood before her and looked down into her face.

‘I thought I was never going to see you again, Judy. You’re looking marvellous.’

He was going to be irresistible. Already something in her was starting to leap up in response to him; and watching his face, she saw with a terrible pang that it was true, unarguable, proved over again more clearly than ever, that he had some quality which separated him from everybody else in the whole world, startled the imagination and made him of appalling significance to her.

‘I’m cold. Thank God for a good fire. It’s starting to snow.’ He flung himself down on the hearth-rug. ‘Trust Martin to make a good thick atmosphere with no beastly fresh air about it. Tea! Tea! Tea! Let me make you some toast, Judy. I make it so well.’

While he toasted great hunks of bread, Martin buttered scones and cut the cake, and Judith poured out tea.

They chattered, joked, teased each other. They played absurd drawing and rhyming games. Judith made them laugh with malicious stories of dons and students. Roddy threw back his head, his whole face wrinkled and flattened with silent laughter, his eyes gleaming with amusement under their lids. Martin stared, laughed, Ha! Ha!—stared again. They encouraged her, listened to her, were delighted with her; and the old sense of abnormal self-assurance grew within her taut mind.

At last she made herself look at the clock. So late! There would barely be time to get back before Hall.

‘I’ve got a car outside,’ said Roddy carelessly. ‘I can run you out in no time.’

He added, interrupting her thanks:

‘It isn’t mine, it’s got no hood, it always breaks down and it’s hellishly uncomfortable, so I don’t advise it really.’

It sounded as if he were suddenly regretting his offer, trying to withdraw it. She looked at him, all her confidence collapsing in a moment. His face had become a mask.

She said swiftly:

‘If you would take me I should be very grateful.’ Her voice sounded to herself strained, beseeching, horrible.

He bowed.

It took ten minutes to get the car started, with Martin and Roddy madly swinging her by turns.

‘Good night, Martin. Thank you for my lovely tea party. I’ll see you again soon, won’t I?’

He nodded, looking gravely down at her in the lamp-light.

‘Don’t catch cold,’ he said. There was something dejected about his attitude, a flatness in his voice.... Things had gone wrong for him.... Ever since that panic-stricken voice had broken in on the laughter and talk, the game for three, with its vibrating cry: “If you would take me home ...” from that moment all had been faintly blown upon by a ruffle of uneasy wind. They were no longer three persons, but two men and one woman.

She knew it and loathed herself because Martin knew it too.

‘I’m due to dine with Tony in twenty minutes,’ said Roddy.... ‘You’d better come along too. I’ll call for you on my way back. I shan’t be long.’

Roddy’s voice had forced a note of carelessness ... as if he were trying to pretend to Martin that nothing had happened; that the female had not suddenly singled him out and stretched an inviting hand to him as he stood beside his friend.

Even Roddy was aware of it.

‘No,’ said Martin, ‘I won’t dine with Tony. I’ll see you to-morrow perhaps.’

He waved his hand and turned away. The car started. She was alone with a strange man.

The night was dark, with a piercing wind and a faint flurry of snow in the air. Roddy drove at a great pace, and she sat beside him in silence, her shoulder touching his.

‘Cold?’ he said suddenly.

‘No, I don’t feel—anything.’

All of life was concentrated in her dark beating mind: her body was insensible to the weather. She saw the gates of College fly past. Its lights gleamed and were gone; and she could not speak. On they went, the long straight empty road flung before them in small lengths by the headlights and rolled up into nothingness behind them, cast away for ever.

He stopped the car suddenly.

‘Where’s this place?’

‘I think we’ve passed it long ago.’

The wind took her small voice away from him. He leaned towards her.

‘What?’

She turned to him.

‘I think we’ve passed it long ago.’

‘I think we have.’

Silence. The great wind blowing through illimitable deeps of night lifted and whirled her beyond time and space. She saw his hand lying on the wheel—a pale blur; and her own crept out and lay beside it; and she stared at them both. He watched her hand fall beside his and did not move a hair’s breadth nearer to touch it. He and she were alone together. No need for speech or movement. Their hands would lie motionless, side by side, for ever and ever.

She heard him laugh softly; and as he laughed her hand came quickly to her lap.

‘Well, what d’you want to do?’ he said very low.

‘I don’t want to go back.’

‘Do you want to go on?’

‘Yes.’

The car went forward again. Once she leaned towards him and said in his ear:

‘Roddy!’

‘Yes?’

‘You didn’t want to go back, did you?’

‘No.’

She lay back again, mindlessly at peace in the midst of the roaring of the wind, and the road’s monotonous unfolding.

Once he burst out laughing, patted her knee and cried:

‘Aren’t we mad?’

His voice rang boyishly, happily.

Now came the snow, thinly at first, but soon in wild drifting clouds, blotting out the road, settling thick and fast over all, sifting and piling on the wind-screen.

‘Oh Lord, we must turn,’ said Roddy. ‘This is frightful.’

He turned the car and then stopped her to light a cigarette. She saw his face, lit by the flare of the match, glow suddenly, warmly out of the darkness with unknown curves and strange planes of light and shadow, and narrowed eyes, eyes not human, never-to-be-forgotten.

He waved the dwindling flame in her face.

‘Solemn face! What are you staring at? Smile—quick, quick, before the match goes out!’

The match went out.

‘I am smiling, Roddy.’

‘That’s right. Poor Judy covered with snow! There you sit, so modest and unassuming. Shall I get you home alive?’

‘I don’t care.’

She slipped her arm through his, and he gave it a quick friendly pressure and drove on.

Now they were before the gates of College. After all they had not driven very far. Time started again with a reluctant painful beat as the car crept in under the archway; and she realized that it was little more than an hour since they had left Martin. It seemed so short now—less than a moment; a pause between a breath and another breath.

They sat side by side in the car without moving.

‘I suppose I must go in now,’ she said at last. ‘They’ll still be at Hall.’

He shivered and beat his hands together. She took one and felt it, and it was icy.

‘Your hands. Oh, Roddy! Will you come in and get warm by my fire?’

He seemed to be considering and then said in a stilted way:

‘If I may—just for a minute—I’ve got rather chilled driving without gloves.’

She could find nothing to say. A cold shy politeness had descended on them both. She led the way into the hall and up the stairs. At every step snow fell off them: their shoulders and arms were covered in it. The corridors were silent and deserted, echoing only her light footsteps, and his heavier ones. She heard her tread, and his following after it, marching, marching towards her far-off door. Judith was bringing Roddy, Judith was in sober truth bringing Roddy to her room. If anyone saw her there would be trouble.

Somebody—Jennifer perhaps—must have drawn the curtains and heaped the fire in the little room. The warmth drew out the smell of the chrysanthemums; and their heavy golden heads, massed in a blue jar, held mysterious intensity of life in the firelight. She switched on the reading lamp, and all the colours in the room leapt up dimly, secretly: purple, blue and rose-colour glowed around them, half-lit, half obscured.

‘This is rather seductive,’ he said. He sank on his knees by the fire and held out his hands to the blaze, looking about him with a faint smile. She came and knelt beside him; and his eyes fastened narrowly on her face.

‘It’s like you: seductive,’ he said softly.

‘Oh, Roddy! Seductive. That’s all it is. I see it now. I hate it. Am I nothing more than that?’

‘You.... I don’t know what you are. I can’t make you out. You never behave as I think you probably will.’

‘I’m glad of that.’

‘Why are you glad?’

‘Because I believe you ascribe to me the worst motives,—the most ambiguous. You suspect me—you guard yourself against me.’

‘I don’t, Judy.’

‘Ah, you do. But you needn’t. I won’t do you any harm. Unless being—very fond of you can do you harm. But I don’t think I’m a femme fatale.’

‘I don’t know what you are. You disturb me very much. You seem to me completely incalculable. Your eyes watch me and watch me. Such marvellous eyes.’

She lifted them to his in a long steady look and remained silent.

‘You’re very nice,’ he said. ‘Rather a dear. I believe you’re quite without guile really. Why do you trust people so? It’s very foolish of you.’

‘Is it foolish of me to trust you?’

‘Incredibly foolish.’ He added, raising his voice and speaking slowly: ‘It’s no good trying to make me—adequate.’

‘Ah, you like to destroy yourself to me.’

‘But don’t you see? I go through the days in a sort of apathy; blind and deaf; blinder and deafer every day. I never think, I never care. I’d much better be dead only,—I’m too lazy to shoot myself.’

‘Oh, Roddy, don’t.’

She covered her ears with her hands. He had never spoken at such length, or with such obvious intent to convince.

‘I’m only trying to warn you,’ he said, rather defiantly, ‘I’m not worth saving. Nobody must ever take me seriously. I’m not worth wasting a moment over. Nobody can do anything with me.’

His mood was verging towards laughter. His face broke up teasingly as he finished speaking and turned to look at her. But she averted her face, drearily pondering.

Why had he spoken like that? A self-contempt so settled, so hopeless.... He had seemed to be warning her to keep away from him for her own sake.

‘It’s no good,’ she said suddenly, involuntarily.

‘What’s no good?’

‘You’re what I choose to think you are. There’s no point in heaping yourself with abuse. You can’t make me dislike you; you can only make me sad. But I suppose that gives you pleasure.’

He was silent. She went on tremulously,

‘And when you—when people say they don’t feel or care—that they’re no good—it only makes me think—I could show them how to feel and care. I could make them happy. I could look after them. I dare say you know that’s—the effect it has on me. That’s why you say it.’

He was still silent. She leaned her head forward against the wall and felt tears smart under her lids.

He seemed to be musing, his eyes fixed on the fire, his hands held out to it.

‘Are your hands still cold?’ she said wearily. ‘Get them warm before you go.’

Suddenly he held them out to her.

It was a gesture so impulsive, so uncharacteristic it seemed of startling significance; and she could not answer it.

‘Yes, they are cold,’ he said. ‘Let me feel yours. Yours are cold too. What funny hands—so thin and narrow, such delicate bones. Rather lovely.’ He clasped them hard in his own. ‘When I do that they seem to go to nothing.’

She smiled at him dimly, half-tranced, feeling her eyelids droop over her eyes, giving him, with her helpless hands, all of herself; as if, through her finger-tips, he drew her in to himself in a dark stemlessly flowing tide. He stroked her palms, her whole hand, over and over with a lingering careful touch, as if learning the outline by heart.

‘They feel so kind,’ he said musingly. ‘They are, aren’t they, Judy? Dear little kind things—like the rest of you. Are you always kind, Judy?’

‘Always to you, Roddy, I shouldn’t wonder.’

He relinquished his clasp suddenly, saying with a shake of the head:

‘You shouldn’t be.... However, I’ve warned you.’

‘Yes, you’ve warned me.’

She smiled at him sadly.

In a minute she must tell him to go. They would be coming out of the Hall, bursting into the room to discover the cause of her absence.

‘Are you tired?’ he said.

She nodded, realizing suddenly the collapsed forward droop of her body, the whole pose of deadly fatigue.

‘I’ve been very ill, you know.’

‘Oh, Judy! You never told me. You let me take you for that bloody cold drive. You’ll be ill again.’

‘It’s all right. I shan’t be ill again.’

‘You are naughty,’ he said, looking at her anxiously.

He never could bear people to be ill or in pain.

‘Come and lie down at once on the sofa,’ he said.

She obeyed him, and let him arrange the cushions beneath her shoulders, with a delicious sense of dependence.

‘The drive won’t have hurt me,’ she said, ‘because I enjoyed it so much.’

He stood looking down at her.

‘Did you enjoy it?’ he said softly.

‘Yes, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Wasn’t it a queer unreal drive?’

‘Quite unreal, I suppose.’

‘I wish it had never stopped.’

He made no answer to this but still stood watching her.

‘You’ll have to go, Roddy. They mustn’t find you. Besides you’ll be missing your dinner.’

‘I’ve missed that long ago, I should think.’

‘Oh, Roddy, how awful! I’ve made you miss your dinner.’

‘I know. It’s monstrous of you. And I’m so hungry.’

‘I’ve missed mine too but I’m not hungry.... Roddy, what will Tony say to you?’

‘He’ll be very much annoyed.’

‘Shall you say you were with me? He wouldn’t like that, would he?’

‘No.’

‘Tony is jealous of me. Once he looked at me with pure hatred. I’ve never forgotten it. Does he love you?’

‘I think he does.’

‘I think he does too. Do you love him? You needn’t answer. I know I mustn’t ask you that.’

‘You can ask me anything you like.’

But he did not answer.

‘It is so terrible to be hated. Tell him I won’t do you any harm.’

But perhaps that was not true. Perhaps she meant endless mischief. Supposing she were to take Roddy from Tony, from all his friends and lovers, from all his idle Parisian and English life, and attach him to herself, tie him and possess him: that would mean giving him cares, responsibilities: it might mean changing him from his free and secret self into something ordinary, domesticated, resentful. Perhaps his lovers and friends would be well advised to gather round him jealously and guard him from the female. She saw herself for one moment as a creature of evil design, dangerous to him, and took her hand away from his that held it lightly.

‘I’ll tell him you won’t do me any harm,’ he repeated absently. He was staring into her face.

‘You’re going away now,’ she said, ‘and I don’t know when I shall see you again.’

‘I don’t know either,’ he said smiling.

‘To-morrow you’ll have forgotten. But I shan’t forget this evening.’

‘Nor shall I. I don’t forget you, Judy. I sometimes wish I could. I’m a little afraid of you.’

‘Afraid of me?’

‘Afraid of you—and me.’

Later on when he was gone she must make herself think of that. It might have power to hurt: she could not tell now, with his unmasked, disturbed face watching her. Now there was nothing but depth under depth of welling happiness.

‘You know, Roddy,’ she said after a silence, ‘the awful thing about you is that I can never pick up again where we left off. To-night you’ve talked to me as I’ve always longed for you to talk to me, as if we could trust each other, as if we were two creatures of the same sort alone together. Don’t you feel we know each other better after to-night, Roddy?’

He was silent for a moment, his eyes twinkling; then he said:

‘I feel you’ve made me say a great many indiscreet things.’

‘Poor Roddy! You’d better go, before I wring something out of you you’ll regret to your life’s end,’ she said bitterly. ‘You know I shan’t rest until I’ve forced you to tell me all your secrets. And when you have, I’ll go and tell them to everybody else.’

She shut her eyes and turned her face from him. There was a long silence.

‘Don’t be cross with me,’ he said in the end.

‘I’m not.’

‘Didn’t I tell you I was inadequate?’

‘Yes, you told me.’

‘Well now you believe it don’t you?’

‘No. No. No.’

‘Ah—you’re incorrigible.... Good-bye, Judy.’

She turned towards him again, took his hand in both hers and clung to it.

‘Roddy, you have—quite liked—being with me ... haven’t you?’

His face softened.

‘I’ve adored it,’ he said gently.

‘And when shall I see you again?’

He shook his head.

‘Oh, Roddy, when?’

He stooped swiftly until his face almost touched hers, and murmured, watching her:

‘Whenever you like.’

His lips closed on hers very lightly. She put her arms round his neck and kissed his cheek and forehead. When after a moment or two he raised himself she thought he was smiling again.

She lay perfectly still, watching him while he lit a cigarette, smoothed his hair, put on his coat and went to open the door. Then he turned, still smiling, and nodding as if encouraging her to smile back. But she continued to lie and stare up at him as if from the bottom of a well; as if all of her were dead except the eyes which just moved, following him.

The door closed after him. Soon the sound of his footsteps faded along the corridor.

She raised her hand slowly and with difficulty, as if a weight were holding it to her side, and pulled the lamp’s green shade down; and the whole room sank softly into semi-obscurity.

Some trick of green light brought suddenly to mind the look of early spring woods at twilight: fresh buds and little leaves dashed with rain, an air like dark clear water lighting the branches with a wan glimmer.

She looked at her body lying long, slender and still on the couch; she saw her breast rise and fall faintly with her breathing; and she had a sense of watching herself return from a long swoon, bathed in crystalline new life, transformed and beautified.

The trivial femininities of the room had made, she thought, an inept background for his elegance. But now there seemed something graceful, foreign, curious in the lights and shades, in the forms of flowers, books, furniture; as if he had left his impress upon them.

She heard the footsteps of Jennifer coming swiftly towards her door.... Not a word, not a whisper to Jennifer. She and he could never meet, even in mind. The profoundest instinct forbade it.

Jennifer came gaily in.

‘Tired, darling?’ she said. ‘You were quite right not to come to Hall. It was bloodier than ever. Come, darling, let me put you to bed—you’re so tired. I’ll look after you. I’ll make you some scrambled eggs after you’re in bed.’

Then Jennifer suspected nothing. She did not see that all was changed. She was deep in the mood of tender solicitude which came upon her now and then since the illness, when she remembered to think Judith fragile. She lifted her in her arms, and carried her into the bedroom....

Nothing has changed after all. There was Jennifer laughing, talking, letting the eggs get burnt while she did her hair; bending down finally to kiss you a tender good-night. Judith tried to think of Roddy. A little while ago he had been stooping over her as Jennifer stooped now, with eyes that were different and yet the same. But he had disappeared; she could not now remember what he looked like.

Nothing was altered then, no order was reversed or even shaken. There were these moments; but all around and about the extravagant incongruous brilliances, the divine crudities, the breath-taking magnificences of their pattern, life went on weaving uninterruptedly: weaving uncoloured trivial things into secure fabric.

9

Then, almost it seemed, while she still told herself these things; while the memory of Roddy’s brief presence still surged up bewilderingly to drown her a hundred times a day, and then slipped away again, lost in the mysterious and doubtful darkness cast by his ensuing silence; while Jennifer remained the unquenched spring of all gaiety and reassurance, all delight: while the whole ordered dream went on as if it could never break; even then, with the third year, the shadow of change began to fall.

It was a look, a turn of the head, a new trick of speech, a nothing in Jennifer which struck at her heart in a moment; and then all had started to fall to pieces. Jennifer was no longer the same. Somewhere she had turned aside without a word, and set her face to a new road. She did not want to be followed. She had given Judith the slip, in the dark; and now, when she still pretended to be there, her voice had the false shrillness of a voice coming from far away.