Jacob’s Room - Virginia Woolf (smart ebook reader .TXT) 📗

were now moored, and there were now white dresses and a flaw in the column of air between two trees, round which curled a thread of blue⁠—Lady Miller’s picnic party. Still more boats kept coming, and Durrant, without getting up, shoved their boat closer to the bank.

“Oh-h-h-h,” groaned Jacob, as the boat rocked, and the trees rocked, and the white dresses and the white flannel trousers drew out long and wavering up the bank.

“Oh-h-h-h!” He sat up, and felt as if a piece of elastic had snapped in his face.

“They’re friends of my mother’s,” said Durrant. “So old Bow took no end of trouble about the boat.”

And this boat had gone from Falmouth to St. Ives Bay, all round the coast. A larger boat, a ten-ton yacht, about the twentieth of June, properly fitted out, Durrant said⁠ ⁠…

“There’s the cash difficulty,” said Jacob.

“My people’ll see to that,” said Durrant (the son of a banker, deceased).

“I intend to preserve my economic independence,” said Jacob stiffly. (He was getting excited.)

“My mother said something about going to Harrogate,” he said with a little annoyance, feeling the pocket where he kept his letters.

“Was that true about your uncle becoming a Mohammedan?” asked Timmy Durrant.

Jacob had told the story of his Uncle Morty in Durrant’s room the night before.

“I expect he’s feeding the sharks, if the truth were known,” said Jacob. “I say, Durrant, there’s none left!” he exclaimed, crumpling the bag which had held the cherries, and throwing it into the river. He saw Lady Miller’s picnic party on the island as he threw the bag into the river.

A sort of awkwardness, grumpiness, gloom came into his eyes.

“Shall we move on⁠ ⁠… this beastly crowd⁠ ⁠…” he said.

So up they went, past the island.

The feathery white moon never let the sky grow dark; all night the chestnut blossoms were white in the green; dim was the cow-parsley in the meadows.

The waiters at Trinity must have been shuffling china plates like cards, from the clatter that could be heard in the Great Court. Jacob’s rooms, however, were in Neville’s Court; at the top; so that reaching his door one went in a little out of breath; but he wasn’t there. Dining in Hall, presumably. It will be quite dark in Neville’s Court long before midnight, only the pillars opposite will always be white, and the fountains. A curious effect the gate has, like lace upon pale green. Even in the window you hear the plates; a hum of talk, too, from the diners; the Hall lit up, and the swing-doors opening and shutting with a soft thud. Some are late.

Jacob’s room had a round table and two low chairs. There were yellow flags in a jar on the mantelpiece; a photograph of his mother; cards from societies with little raised crescents, coats of arms, and initials; notes and pipes; on the table lay paper ruled with a red margin⁠—an essay, no doubt⁠—“Does History consist of the Biographies of Great Men?” There were books enough; very few French books; but then anyone who’s worth anything reads just what he likes, as the mood takes him, with extravagant enthusiasm. Lives of the Duke of Wellington, for example; Spinoza; the works of Dickens; the Faery Queen; a Greek dictionary with the petals of poppies pressed to silk between the pages; all the Elizabethans. His slippers were incredibly shabby, like boats burnt to the water’s rim. Then there were photographs from the Greeks, and a mezzotint from Sir Joshua⁠—all very English. The works of Jane Austen, too, in deference, perhaps, to someone else’s standard. Carlyle was a prize. There were books upon the Italian painters of the Renaissance, a Manual of the Diseases of the Horse, and all the usual textbooks. Listless is the air in an empty room, just swelling the curtain; the flowers in the jar shift. One fibre in the wicker armchair creaks, though no one sits there.

Coming down the steps a little sideways [Jacob sat on the window-seat talking to Durrant; he smoked, and Durrant looked at the map], the old man, with his hands locked behind him, his gown floating black, lurched, unsteadily, near the wall; then, upstairs he went into his room. Then another, who raised his hand and praised the columns, the gate, the sky; another, tripping and smug. Each went up a staircase; three lights were lit in the dark windows.

If any light burns above Cambridge, it must be from three such rooms; Greek burns here; science there; philosophy on the ground floor. Poor old Huxtable can’t walk straight;⁠—Sopwith, too, has praised the sky any night these twenty years; and Cowan still chuckles at the same stories. It is not simple, or pure, or wholly splendid, the lamp of learning, since if you see them there under its light (whether Rossetti’s on the wall, or Van Gogh reproduced, whether there are lilacs in the bowl or rusty pipes), how priestly they look! How like a suburb where you go to see a view and eat a special cake! “We are the sole purveyors of this cake.” Back you go to London; for the treat is over.

Old Professor Huxtable, performing with the method of a clock his change of dress, let himself down into his chair; filled his pipe; chose his paper; crossed his feet; and extracted his glasses. The whole flesh of his face then fell into folds as if props were removed. Yet strip a whole seat of an underground railway carriage of its heads and old Huxtable’s head will hold them all. Now, as his eye goes down the print, what a procession tramps through the corridors of his brain, orderly, quick-stepping, and reinforced, as the march goes on, by fresh runnels, till the whole hall, dome, whatever one calls it, is populous with ideas. Such a muster takes place in no other brain. Yet sometimes there he’ll sit for hours together, gripping the arm of the chair, like a man holding fast because stranded, and then, just because his corn