A little dint sharpened between his brows. He frowned as he read. He read; and made a note; then he read again. All sounds were blotted out. He saw nothing but the Greek in front of him. But as he read, his brain gradually warmed; he was conscious of something quickening and tightening in his forehead. He caught phrase after phrase exactly, firmly, more exactly, he noted, making a brief note in the margin, than the night before. Little negligible words now revealed shade of meaning which altered the meaning. He made another note; that was the meaning. His own dexterity in catching the phrase plumb in the middle gave him a thrill of excitement. There it was, clean and entire. But he must be precise; exact; even his little scribbled notes must be clear as print. He turned to this book; then that book. Then he leant back to see, with his eyes shut. He must let nothing dwindle off into vagueness. The clocks began striking. He listened. The clocks went on striking. The lines that had graved themselves on his face slackened; he leant back; his muscles relaxed; he looked up from his books into the dimness. He felt as if he had thrown himself down on the turf after running a race. But for a moment it seemed to him that he was still running; his mind went on without the book. It travelled by itself without impediments through a world of pure meaning; but gradually it lost its meaning. The books stood out on the wall: he saw the cream-coloured panels; a bunch of poppies in a blue vase. The last of the strokes had sounded. He gave a sigh and rose from the table.
He stood by the window again. It was raining, but the whiteness had gone. Save for a wet leaf shining here and there, the garden was all dark now — the yellow mound of the flowering tree had vanished. The college buildings lay round the garden in a low couched mass, here red-stained, here yellow-stained, where lights burnt behind curtains; and there lay the chapel, huddling its bulk against the sky which, because of the rain, seemed to tremble slightly. But it was no longer silent. He listened; there was no sound in particular; but, as he stood looking out, the building hummed with life. There was a sudden roar of laughter; then the tinkle of a piano; then a nondescript clatter and chatter — of china partly; then again the sound of rain falling, and the gutters chuckling and burbling as they sucked up the water. He turned back into the room.
It had grown chilly; the fire was almost out; only a little red glowed under the grey ash. Opportunely he remembered his father’s gift — the wine that had come that morning. He went to the side table and poured himself out a glass of port. As he raised it against the light he smiled. He saw again his father’s hand with two smooth knobs instead of fingers holding the glass, as he always held the glass, to the light before he drank.
“You can’t drive a bayonet through a chap’s body in cold blood,” he remembered him saying.
“And you can’t go in for an exam. without drinking,” said Edward. He hesitated; he held the glass to the light in imitation of his father. Then he sipped. He set the glass on the table in front of him. He turned again to the Antigone. He read; then he sipped; then he read; then he sipped again. A soft glow spread over his spine at the nape of his neck. The wine seemed to press open little dividing doors in his brain. And whether it was the wine or the words or both, a luminous shell formed, a purple fume, from which out stepped a Greek girl; yet she was English. There she stood among the marble and the asphodel, yet there she was among the Morris wall-papers and the cabinets — his cousin Kitty, as he had seen her last time he dined at the lodge. She was both of them — Antigone and Kitty; here in the book; there in the room; lit up, risen, like a purple flower. No, he exclaimed, not in the least like a flower! For if ever a girl held herself upright, lived, laughed and breathed, it was Kitty, in the white and blue dress that she had worn last time he dined at the Lodge. He crossed to the window. Red squares showed through the trees. There was a party at the Lodge. Who was she talking to? What was she saying? He went back to the table.
“Oh, damn!” he exclaimed, prodding the paper with his pencil. The point broke. Then there was a tap at the door, a sliding tap, not a commanding tap, the tap of one who passes, not of one who comes in. He went and opened the door. There on the stair above loomed the figure of a huge young man who was leaning over the banisters. “Come in,” said Edward.
The huge young man came slowly down the stairs. He was very large. His eyes, which were prominent, became apprehensive at the sight of the books on the table. He looked at the books on the table. They were Greek. But there was wine after all.
Edward poured out wine. Beside Gibbs he looked what Eleanor called ‘finicky.’ He felt the contrast himself. The hand with which he lifted his glass was like a girl’s beside Gibbs’s great red paw. Gibbs’s hand was burnt bright scarlet; it was like a piece of raw meat.
Hunting was the subject they had in common. They talked about hunting. Edward leant back and let Gibbs do the talking. It was all very pleasant, listening to Gibbs, riding through these English lanes. He was talking about cubbing in September; and a raw but handy hack. He was saying, “You remember that farm on the right as you go up to Stapleys? and the pretty girl?” — he winked— “worse luck, she’s married to a keeper.” He was saying — Edward watched him gulping down his port — how he wished this damned summer were over. Then, again, he was telling the old story about the spaniel bitch. “You’ll come and stop with us in September,” he was saying when the door opened so silently that Gibbs did not hear it, and in glided another man — quite another man.
It was Ashley who came in. He was the very opposite of Gibbs. He was neither tall nor short, neither dark nor fair. But he was not negligible — far from it. It was partly the way he moved, as if chair and table rayed out some influence which he could feel by means of some invisible antennae, or whiskers, like a cat. Now he sank down, cautiously, gingerly, and looked at the table and half read a line in a book. Gibbs stopped in the middle of his sentence.
“Hullo, Ashley,” he said rather curtly. He stretched out and poured himself another glass of the Colonel’s port. Now the decanter was empty.
“Sorry,” he said, glancing at Ashley.
“Don’t open another bottle for me,” said Ashley quickly. His voice sounded a little squeaky, as if he were ill at ease.
“Oh, but we shall want some more too,” said Edward casually. He went into the dining-room to fetch it.
“Damned awkward,” he reflected as he stooped among the bottles. It meant, he reflected grimly as he chose his bottle, another row with Ashley, and he had had two rows with Ashley about Gibbs already this term.
He went back with the bottle and sat down on a low stool between them. He uncorked the wine and poured it out. They both looked at him, as he sat between them, admiringly. The vanity, which Eleanor always laughed at in her brother, was flattered. He liked to feel their eyes on him. And yet he was at his ease with both of them, he thought; the thought pleased him; he could talk hunting with Gibbs and books with Ashley. But Ashley could only talk about books, and Gibbs — he smiled — could only talk about girls. Girls and horses. He poured out three glasses of wine.
Ashley sipped gingerly, and Gibbs, with his great red hands on the glass, gulped rather. They talked about races; then they talked about examinations. Then Ashley, glancing at the books on the table, said:
“And what about you?”
“I’ve not the ghost of a chance,” said Edward. His indifference was affected. He pretended to despise examinations; but it was pretence. Gibbs was taken in by him; but Ashley saw through him. He often caught Edward out in small vanities like this; but they only served to endear him the more. How beautiful he looks, he was thinking: there he sat between them with the light falling on the top of his fair hair; like a Greek boy; strong; yet in some way, weak, needing his protection.
He ought to be rescued from brutes like Gibbs, he thought savagely. For how Edward could tolerate that clumsy brute, he thought looking at him, who always seemed to smell of beer and horses (he was listening to him) Ashley could not conceive. As he came in he had caught the tail of an infuriating sentence — of a
sentence that seemed to show that they had made some plan together.
“Well, then, I’ll see Storey about that hack,” Gibbs was saying now, as if he were finishing some private talk that they had been having before he came in. A spasm of jealousy ran through Ashley. To hide it, he stretched out his hand and took up a book that lay open on the table. He pretended to read it.
He did it to insult him, Gibbs felt. Ashley, he knew, thought him a great hulking brute; the dirty little swine came in, spoilt the talk, and then began to give himself airs at Gibbs’s expense. Very well; he had been going to go; now he would stay; he would twist his tail for him — he knew how. He turned to Edward and went on talking.
“You won’t mind pigging it,” he said. “My people will be up in Scotland.”
Ashley turned a page viciously. They would be alone then. Edward began to relish the situation; he played up to it maliciously.
“All right,” he said. “But you’ll have to see I don’t make a fool of myself,” he added.
“Oh, it’ll only be cubbing,” said Gibbs. Ashley turned another page. Edward glanced at the book. It was being held upside down. But as he glanced at Ashley he caught his head against the panels and the poppies. How civilised he looked, he thought, compared with Gibbs; and how ironical. He respected him immensely. Gibbs had lost his glamour. There he was, telling the same old story of the spaniel bitch all over again. There would be a devil’s own row tomorrow, he thought, and glanced surreptitiously at his watch. It was past eleven; and he must do an hour’s work before breakfast. He swallowed down the last drops of his wine, stretched himself, yawned ostentatiously and rose.
“I’m off to bed,” he said. Ashley looked at him appealingly. Edward could torture him horribly. Edward began unbuttoning his waistcoat; he had a perfect figure, Ashley thought, looking at him, standing between them.
“But don’t you hurry” said Edward, yawning again. “Finish your drinks.” He smiled at the thought of Ashley and Gibbs finishing their drinks together.
“There’s plenty more in there if you want it.” He indicated the next room and left them.
“Let ’em fight it out together,” he thought as he shut the bedroom door. His own fight would come soon enough; he knew that from the look on Ashley’s face. He was infernally jealous. He began to undress. He put his money methodically in two heaps on either side of the looking-glass, for he was a little near about money; folded his waistcoat carefully on a chair; then glanced at himself in the looking-glass, and brushed his crest up with the half-conscious gesture that irritated his sister. Then he listened.
A door slammed outside. One of them had gone — either Gibbs or Ashley. But one, he rather thought, was still there. He listened intently. He heard someone moving about in the sitting-room. Very quickly, very firmly, he turned the key in the door. A moment later the handle moved.
“Edward!” said Ashley. His voice was low and controlled.
Edward made no answer.
“Edward!” said Ashley, rattling the handle.
The voice was sharp and appealing.
“Good-night,” said Edward sharply. He listened. There was a pause. Then he heard the door shut. Ashley was gone.
“Lord! What a row there’ll be tomorrow,” said Edward, going to the window and looking out at the rain that was still falling.
The party at the Lodge was over. The ladies stood in the doorway in their flowing gowns, and looked up at the sky from which a gentle rain was falling.
“Is that a nightingale?” said Mrs Larpent, hearing a bird twitter in the bushes. Then old Chuffy — the great Dr. Andrews — standing slightly behind her with his domed head exposed to the drizzle and his hirsute, powerful but not prepossessing countenance turned upward, gave a roar of laughter. It was a thrush, he said. The laughter was echoed back like a hyena laughing from the stone walls. Then, with a wave of the hand dictated by centuries of tradition, Mrs Larpent drew back her foot, as if she had encroached upon one of the chalk marks which decorate academic lintels and, signifying that Mrs Lathom, wife of the Divinity professor, should precede her, they passed out into the rain.
In the long drawing-room at the Lodge they were all standing up.
“I’m so glad Chuffy — Dr. Andrews — came up to your expectations,” Mrs Malone was saying in her courteous manner. As residents they called the great Doctor “Chuffy”; he was Dr. Andrews to American visitors.
The other guests had gone. But the Howard Fripps, the Americans, were staying in the house. Mrs Howard Fripp was saying that Dr. Andrews had been perfectly charming to her. And her husband, the Professor, was saying something equally polite to the Master. Kitty, the daughter, standing a little in the background, wished that they would get it over and come to bed. But she had to stand there until her mother gave the signal for them to move.
“Yes, I never knew Chuffy in better form,” her father continued, implying a compliment to the little American lady who had made such a conquest. She was small and vivacious, and Chuffy liked ladies to be small and vivacious.
“I adore his books,” she said in her queer nasal voice. “But I never expected to have the pleasure of sitting next him at dinner.”
Did you really like the way he spits when he talks? Kitty wondered, looking at her. She was extraordinarily pretty and gay. All the other women had looked dowdy and dumpy beside her, except her mother. For Mrs Malone, standing by the fireplace with her foot on the fender, with her crisp white hair curled stiffly, never looked in the fashion or out of it. Mrs Fripp, on the contrary, looked in the fashion.
And yet they laughed at her, Kitty thought. She had caught the Oxford ladies lifting their eyebrows at some of Mrs Fripp’s American phrases. But Kitty liked her American phrases; they were so different from what she was used to. She was American, a real American; but nobody would have taken her husband for an American, Kitty thought, looking at him. He might have been any professor, from any University, she thought, with his distinguished wrinkled face, his goatee beard and the black ribbon of his eyeglass crossing his shirt-front as if it were some foreign order. He spoke without any accent — at least without any American accent. Yet he too was different somehow. She had dropped her handkerchief. He stooped at once and gave it her with a bow that was almost too courteous — it made her shy. She bent her head and smiled at the Professor, rather shyly, as she took the handkerchief.
“Thank you so much,” she said. He made her feel awkward. Beside Mrs Fripp she felt even larger than usual. Her hair, of the true Rigby red, never lay smooth as it should have done; Mrs Fripp’s hair looked beautiful, glossy and tidy.
But now Mrs Malone, glancing at Mrs Fripp, said, “Well, ladies — ?” and waved her hand.
There was something authoritative about her action — as if she had done it again and again; and been obeyed again and again. They moved towards the door. Tonight there was a little ceremony at the door; Professor Fripp bent very low over Mrs Malone’s hand, not quite so low over Kitty’s hand, and held the door wide open for them.
“He rather overdoes it,” Kitty thought to herself as they passed out.
The ladies took their candles and went in single file up the wide low stairs. Portraits of former masters of Katharine’s looked down on them as they mounted. The light of the candles flickered over the dark gold-framed faces as they went up stair after stair.
Now she’ll stop, thought Kitty, following behind, and ask who that is.
But Mrs Fripp did not stop. Kitty gave her good marks for that. She compared favourably with most of their visitors, Kitty thought. She had never done the Bodleian quite so quick as she had done it that morning. Indeed, she had felt rather guilty. There were a great many more sights to be seen, had they wished it. But in less than an hour of it Mrs Fripp had turned to Kitty and had said in her fascinating, if nasal, voice:
“Well, my dear, I guess you’re a bit fed-up with sights — what d’you say to an ice in that dear old bun-shop with the bow windows?”
And th
ey had eaten ices when they ought to have been going round the Bodleian.
The procession had now reached the first landing, and Mrs Malone stopped at the door of the famous room where distinguished guests always slept when they stayed at the Lodge. She gave one look round as she held the door open.
“The bed where Queen Elizabeth did not sleep,” she said, making the usual little joke as they looked at the great four-poster. The fire was burning; the water-jug was swaddled up like an old woman with the toothache; and the candles were lit on the dressing-table. But there was something strange about the room tonight, Kitty thought, glancing over her mother’s shoulder; a dressing-gown flashed green and silver upon the bed. And on the dressing-table there were a number of little pots and jars and a large powder-puff stained pink. Could it be, was it possible, that the reason why Mrs Fripp looked so very bright and the Oxford ladies looked so very dingy was that Mrs Fripp — But Mrs Malone was saying, “You have everything you want?” with such extreme politeness that Kitty guessed that Mrs Malone too had seen the dressing-table. Kitty held out her hand. To her surprise, instead of taking it, Mrs Fripp pulled her down and kissed her.
“Thanks a thousand times for showing me all those sights,” she said. “And remember, you’re coming to stay with us in America,” she added. For she had liked the big shy girl who had so obviously preferred eating ices to showing her the Bodleian; and she had felt sorry for her too for some reason.
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 208
