Jacob's Room, Virginia Woolf [non fiction books to read .txt] 📗

a sculptor,

who had squared the forehead, stretched the mouth, and left marks of his

thumbs and streaks from his fingers in the clay. But the eyes had never

been shut. They were rather prominent, and rather bloodshot, as if from

staring and staring, and when he spoke they looked for a second

disturbed, but went on staring. An unshaded electric light hung above

her head.

 

As for the beauty of women, it is like the light on the sea, never

constant to a single wave. They all have it; they all lose it. Now she

is dull and thick as bacon; now transparent as a hanging glass. The

fixed faces are the dull ones. Here comes Lady Venice displayed like a

monument for admiration, but carved in alabaster, to be set on the

mantelpiece and never dusted. A dapper brunette complete from head to

foot serves only as an illustration to lie upon the drawing-room table.

The women in the streets have the faces of playing cards; the outlines

accurately filled in with pink or yellow, and the line drawn tightly

round them. Then, at a top-floor window, leaning out, looking down, you

see beauty itself; or in the corner of an omnibus; or squatted in a

ditch—beauty glowing, suddenly expressive, withdrawn the moment after.

No one can count on it or seize it or have it wrapped in paper. Nothing

is to be won from the shops, and Heaven knows it would be better to sit

at home than haunt the plate-glass windows in the hope of lifting the

shining green, the glowing ruby, out of them alive. Sea glass in a

saucer loses its lustre no sooner than silks do. Thus if you talk of a

beautiful woman you mean only something flying fast which for a second

uses the eyes, lips, or cheeks of Fanny Elmer, for example, to glow

through.

 

She was not beautiful, as she sat stiffly; her underlip too prominent;

her nose too large; her eyes too near together. She was a thin girl,

with brilliant cheeks and dark hair, sulky just now, or stiff with

sitting. When Bramham snapped his stick of charcoal she started. Bramham

was out of temper. He squatted before the gas fire warming his hands.

Meanwhile she looked at his drawing. He grunted. Fanny threw on a

dressing-gown and boiled a kettle.

 

“By God, it’s bad,” said Bramham.

 

Fanny dropped on to the floor, clasped her hands round her knees, and

looked at him, her beautiful eyes—yes, beauty, flying through the room,

shone there for a second. Fanny’s eyes seemed to question, to

commiserate, to be, for a second, love itself. But she exaggerated.

Bramham noticed nothing. And when the kettle boiled, up she scrambled,

more like a colt or a puppy than a loving woman.

 

Now Jacob walked over to the window and stood with his hands in his

pockets. Mr. Springett opposite came out, looked at his shop window, and

went in again. The children drifted past, eyeing the pink sticks of

sweetstuff. Pickford’s van swung down the street. A small boy twirled

from a rope. Jacob turned away. Two minutes later he opened the front

door, and walked off in the direction of Holborn.

 

Fanny Elmer took down her cloak from the hook. Nick Bramham unpinned his

drawing and rolled it under his arm. They turned out the lights and set

off down the street, holding on their way through all the people, motor

cars, omnibuses, carts, until they reached Leicester Square, five

minutes before Jacob reached it, for his way was slightly longer, and he

had been stopped by a block in Holborn waiting to see the King drive by,

so that Nick and Fanny were already leaning over the barrier in the

promenade at the Empire when Jacob pushed through the swing doors and

took his place beside them.

 

“Hullo, never noticed you,” said Nick, five minutes later.

 

“Bloody rot,” said Jacob.

 

“Miss Elmer,” said Nick.

 

Jacob took his pipe out of his mouth very awkwardly.

 

Very awkward he was. And when they sat upon a plush sofa and let the

smoke go up between them and the stage, and heard far off the high-pitched voices and the jolly orchestra breaking in opportunely he was

still awkward, only Fanny thought: “What a beautiful voice!” She thought

how little he said yet how firm it was. She thought how young men are

dignified and aloof, and how unconscious they are, and how quietly one

might sit beside Jacob and look at him. And how childlike he would be,

come in tired of an evening, she thought, and how majestic; a little

overbearing perhaps; “But I wouldn’t give way,” she thought. He got up

and leant over the barrier. The smoke hung about him.

 

And for ever the beauty of young men seems to be set in smoke, however

lustily they chase footballs, or drive cricket balls, dance, run, or

stride along roads. Possibly they are soon to lose it. Possibly they

look into the eyes of faraway heroes, and take their station among us

half contemptuously, she thought (vibrating like a fiddle-string, to be

played on and snapped). Anyhow, they love silence, and speak

beautifully, each word falling like a disc new cut, not a hubble-bubble

of small smooth coins such as girls use; and they move decidedly, as if

they knew how long to stay and when to go—oh, but Mr. Flanders was only

gone to get a programme.

 

“The dancers come right at the end,” he said, coming back to them.

 

And isn’t it pleasant, Fanny went on thinking, how young men bring out

lots of silver coins from their trouser pockets, and look at them,

instead of having just so many in a purse?

 

Then there she was herself, whirling across the stage in white flounces,

and the music was the dance and fling of her own soul, and the whole

machinery, rock and gear of the world was spun smoothly into those swift

eddies and falls, she felt, as she stood rigid leaning over the barrier

two feet from Jacob Flanders.

 

Her screwed-up black glove dropped to the floor. When Jacob gave it her,

she started angrily. For never was there a more irrational passion. And

Jacob was afraid of her for a moment—so violent, so dangerous is it

when young women stand rigid; grasp the barrier; fall in love.

 

It was the middle of February. The roofs of Hampstead Garden Suburb lay

in a tremulous haze. It was too hot to walk. A dog barked, barked,

barked down in the hollow. The liquid shadows went over the plain.

 

The body after long illness is languid, passive, receptive of sweetness,

but too weak to contain it. The tears well and fall as the dog barks in

the hollow, the children skim after hoops, the country darkens and

brightens. Beyond a veil it seems. Ah, but draw the veil thicker lest I

faint with sweetness, Fanny Elmer sighed, as she sat on a bench in

Judges Walk looking at Hampstead Garden Suburb. But the dog went on

barking. The motor cars hooted on the road. She heard a faraway rush

and humming. Agitation was at her heart. Up she got and walked. The

grass was freshly green; the sun hot. All round the pond children were

stooping to launch little boats; or were drawn back screaming by their

nurses.

 

At mid-day young women walk out into the air. All the men are busy in

the town. They stand by the edge of the blue pond. The fresh wind

scatters the children’s voices all about. My children, thought Fanny

Elmer. The women stand round the pond, beating off great prancing shaggy

dogs. Gently the baby is rocked in the perambulator. The eyes of all the

nurses, mothers, and wandering women are a little glazed, absorbed. They

gently nod instead of answering when the little boys tug at their

skirts, begging them to move on.

 

And Fanny moved, hearing some cry—a workman’s whistle perhaps—high in

mid-air. Now, among the trees, it was the thrush trilling out into the

warm air a flutter of jubilation, but fear seemed to spur him, Fanny

thought; as if he too were anxious with such joy at his heart—as if he

were watched as he sang, and pressed by tumult to sing. There! Restless,

he flew to the next tree. She heard his song more faintly. Beyond it was

the humming of the wheels and the wind rushing.

 

She spent tenpence on lunch.

 

“Dear, miss, she’s left her umbrella,” grumbled the mottled woman in the

glass box near the door at the Express Dairy Company’s shop.

 

“Perhaps I’ll catch her,” answered Milly Edwards, the waitress with the

pale plaits of hair; and she dashed through the door.

 

“No good,” she said, coming back a moment later with Fanny’s cheap

umbrella. She put her hand to her plaits.

 

“Oh, that door!” grumbled the cashier.

 

Her hands were cased in black mittens, and the finger-tips that drew in

the paper slips were swollen as sausages.

 

“Pie and greens for one. Large coffee and crumpets. Eggs on toast. Two

fruit cakes.”

 

Thus the sharp voices of the waitresses snapped. The lunchers heard

their orders repeated with approval; saw the next table served with

anticipation. Their own eggs on toast were at last delivered. Their eyes

strayed no more.

 

Damp cubes of pastry fell into mouths opened like triangular bags.

 

Nelly Jenkinson, the typist, crumbled her cake indifferently enough.

Every time the door opened she looked up. What did she expect to see?

 

The coal merchant read the Telegraph without stopping, missed the

saucer, and, feeling abstractedly, put the cup down on the tablecloth.

 

“Did you ever hear the like of that for impertinence?” Mrs. Parsons

wound up, brushing the crumbs from her furs.

 

“Hot milk and scone for one. Pot of tea. Roll and butter,” cried the

waitresses.

 

The door opened and shut.

 

Such is the life of the elderly.

 

It is curious, lying in a boat, to watch the waves. Here are three

coming regularly one after another, all much of a size. Then, hurrying

after them comes a fourth, very large and menacing; it lifts the boat;

on it goes; somehow merges without accomplishing anything; flattens

itself out with the rest.

 

What can be more violent than the fling of boughs in a gale, the tree

yielding itself all up the trunk, to the very tip of the branch,

streaming and shuddering the way the wind blows, yet never flying in

dishevelment away? The corn squirms and abases itself as if preparing to

tug itself free from the roots, and yet is tied down.

 

Why, from the very windows, even in the dusk, you see a swelling run

through the street, an aspiration, as with arms outstretched, eyes

desiring, mouths agape. And then we peaceably subside. For if the

exaltation lasted we should be blown like foam into the air. The stars

would shine through us. We should go down the gale in salt drops—as

sometimes happens. For the impetuous spirits will have none of this

cradling. Never any swaying or aimlessly lolling for them. Never any

making believe, or lying cosily, or genially supposing that one is much

like another, fire warm, wine pleasant, extravagance a sin.

 

“People are so nice, once you know them.”

 

“I couldn’t think ill of her. One must remember—” But Nick perhaps, or

Fanny Elmer, believing implicitly in the truth of the moment, fling off,

sting the cheek, are gone like sharp hail.

 

“Oh,” said Fanny, bursting into the studio three-quarters of an hour

late because she had been hanging about the neighbourhood of the

Foundling Hospital merely for the chance of