“Good-night, Kitty,” said her mother as she shut the door; and they touched each other perfunctorily on the cheek.
Kitty went on upstairs to her own room. She still felt the spot where Mrs Fripp had kissed her; the kiss had left a little glow on her cheek.
She shut the door. The room was very stuffy. It was a warm night, but they always shut the windows and drew the curtains. She opened the windows and drew the curtains. It was raining as usual. Arrows of silver rain crossed the dark trees in the garden. Then she kicked off her shoes. That was the worst of being so large — shoes were always too tight; white satin shoes in particular. Then she began to unhook her dress. It was difficult; there were so many hooks and all at the back; but at last the white satin dress was off and laid neatly across the chair; and then she began to brush her hair. It had been Thursday at its very worst, she reflected; sights in the morning; people for lunch; undergraduates for tea; and a dinner-party in the evening.
However, she concluded, tugging the comb through her hair, it’s over . . . it’s over.
The candles flickered and then the muslin blind, blowing out in a white balloon, almost touched the flame. She opened her eyes with a start. She was standing at the open window with a light beside her in her petticoat.
“Anybody might see in,” her mother had said, scolding her only the other day.
Now, she said, moving the candle to a table at the right, nobody can see in.
She began to brush her hair again. But with the light at the side instead of in front she saw her face from a different angle.
Am I pretty? she asked herself, putting down her comb and looking in the glass. Her cheek-bones were too prominent; her eyes were set too far apart. She was not pretty; no, her size was against her. What did Mrs Fripp think of me, she wondered?
She kissed me, she suddenly remembered with a start of pleasure, feeling again the glow on her cheek. She asked me to go with them in America. What fun that would be! she thought. What fun to leave Oxford and go to America! She tugged the comb through her hair, which was like a fuzz bush.
But the bells were making their usual commotion. She hated the sound of the bells; it always seemed to her a dismal sound; and then, just as one stopped, here was another beginning. They went walloping one over another, one after another, as if they would never be finished. She counted eleven, twelve, and then they went on thirteen, fourteen . . . clock repeating clock through the damp, drizzling air. It was late. She began to brush her teeth. She glanced at the calendar above the washstand and tore off Thursday and screwed it into a ball, as if she were saying “That’s over! That’s over!” Friday in large red letters confronted her. Friday was a good day; on Friday she had her lesson with Lucy; she was going to tea with the Robsons. “Blessed is he who has found his work” she read on the calendar. Calendars always seemed to be talking at you. She had not done her work. She glanced at a row of blue volumes, “The Constitutional History of England, by Dr. Andrews.” There was a paper slip in volume three. She should have finished her chapter for Lucy; but not tonight. She was too tired tonight. She turned to the window. A roar of laughter floated out from the undergraduates’ quarters. What are they laughing at, she wondered as she stood by the window. It sounded as if they were enjoying themselves. They never laugh like that when they come to tea at the Lodge, she thought, as the laughter died away. The little man from Balliol sat twisting his fingers, twisting his fingers. He would not talk; but he would not go. Then she blew out the candle and got into bed. I rather like him, she thought, stretching out in the cool sheets, though he twists his fingers. As for Tony Ashton, she thought, turning on her pillow, I don’t like him. He always seemed to be cross-examining her about Edward, whom Eleanor, she thought, calls ‘Nigs’. His eyes were too close together. A bit of a barber’s block, she thought. He had followed her at the picnic the other day — the picnic when the ant got into Mrs Lathom’s skirts. There he was always beside her. But she didn’t want to marry him. She didn’t want to be a Don’s wife and live in Oxford for ever. No, no, no! She yawned, turned on her pillow, and listening to a belated bell that went walloping like a slow porpoise through the thick drizzling air, yawned once more and fell asleep.
The rain fell steadily all night long, making a faint mist over the fields, chuckling and burbling in the gutters. In gardens it fell over flowering bushes of lilac and laburnum. It slipped gently over the leaden domes of libraries, and splayed out of the laughing mouths of gargoyles. It smeared the window where the Jew boy from Birmingham sat mugging up Greek with a wet towel round his head; where Dr. Malone sat up late writing another chapter in his monumental history of the college. And in the garden of the Lodge outside Kitty’s window it sluiced the ancient tree under which Kings and poets had sat drinking three centuries ago, but now it was half fallen and had to be propped up by a stake in the middle.
“Umbrella, Miss?” said Hiscock, offering Kitty an umbrella as she left the house rather later than she should have left it the following afternoon. There was a chilliness in the air which made her glad, as she caught sight of a party with white and yellow frocks and cushions bound for the river, that she was not going to sit in a boat today. No parties today, she thought, no parties today. But she was late, the clock warned her.
She strode along until she came to the cheap red villas that her father disliked so much that he would always make a round to avoid them. But as it was in one of these cheap red villas that Miss Craddock lived, Kitty saw them haloed with romance. Her heart beat faster as she turned the corner by the new chapel and saw the steep steps of the house where Miss Craddock actually lived. Lucy went up those steps and down them every day; that was her window; this was her bell. The bell came out with a jerk when she pulled it; but it did not go back again, for everything was ramshackle in Lucy’s house; but everything was romantic. There was Lucy’s umbrella in the stand; and it too was not like other umbrellas; it had a parrot’s head for a handle. But as she went up the steep shiny stairs excitement became mixed with fear: once more she had scamped her work; she had not “given her mind to it” again this week.
“She’s coming!” thought Miss Craddock, holding her pen suspended. Her nose was red-tipped; there was something owl-like about the eyes, round which there was a sallow, hollow depression. There was the bell. The pen had been dipped in red ink; she had been correcting Kitty’s essay. Now she heard her step on the stairs. “She’s coming!” she thought with a little catch of her breath, laying down the pen.
“I’m awfully sorry, Miss Craddock,” Kitty said, taking off her things and sitting down at the table. “But we had people staying in the house.”
Miss Craddock brushed her hand over her mouth in a way she had when she was disappointed.
“I see,” she said. “So you haven’t done any work this week either.”
Miss Craddock took up her pen and dipped it in the red ink. Then she turned to the essay.
“It wasn’t worth correcting,” she remarked, pausing with her pen in the air.
“A child of ten would have been ashamed of it.” Kitty blushed bright red.
“And the odd thing is,” said Miss Craddock putting down her pen when the lesson was over, “that you’ve got quite an original mind.”
Kitty flushed bright red with pleasure.
“But you don’t use it,” said Miss Craddock. “Why don’t you use it?” she added, looking at her out of her fine grey eyes.
“You see, Miss Craddock,” Kitty began eagerly, “my mother—”
“Hm . . . hm . . . hm . . .” Miss Craddock stopped her. Confidences were not what Dr. Malone paid her for. She got up.
“Look at my flowers,” she said, feeling that she had snubbed her too severely. There was a bowl of flowers on the table; wild flowers, blue and white, stuck into a cushion of wet green moss.
“My sister sent them from the moors,” she said.
“The moors?” said Kitty. “Which moors?” She stooped and touched the little flowers tender
ly. How lovely she is, Miss Craddock thought; for she was sentimental about Kitty. But I will not be sentimental, she told herself.
“The Scarborough moors,” she said aloud. “If you keep the moss damp but not too damp, they’ll last for weeks,” she added, looking at the flowers.
“Damp, but not too damp,” Kitty smiled. “That’s easy in Oxford, I should think. It’s always raining here.” She looked at the window. Mild rain was falling.
“If I lived up there, Miss Craddock—” she began, taking her umbrella. But she stopped. The lesson was over.
“You’d find it very dull,” said Miss Craddock, looking at her. She was putting on her cloak. Certainly she looked very lovely, putting on her cloak.
“When I was your age,” Miss Craddock continued, remembering her rôle as teacher, “I would have given my eyes to have the opportunities you have, to meet the people you meet; to know the people you know.”
“Old Chuffy?” said Kitty, remembering Miss Craddock’s profound admiration for that light of learning.
“You irreverent girl!” Miss Craddock expostulated. “The greatest historian of his age!”
“Well, he doesn’t talk history to me,” said Kitty, remembering the damp feel of a heavy hand on her knee.
She hesitated; but the lesson was over; another pupil was coming. She glanced round the room. There was a plate of oranges on the top of a pile of shiny exercise-books: a box that looked as if it contained biscuits. Was this her only room, she wondered? Did she sleep on the lumpy-looking sofa with the shawl thrown over it? There was no looking-glass, and she stuck her hat on rather to one side, thinking as she did so that Miss Craddock despised clothes.
But Miss Craddock was thinking how wonderful it was to be young and lovely and to meet brilliant men.
“I’m going to tea with the Robsons,” said Kitty, holding out her hand. The girl, Nelly Robson, was Miss Craddock’s favourite pupil; the only girl, she used to say, who knew what work meant.
“Are you walking?” said Miss Craddock, looking at her clothes. “It’s some way, you know. Down Ringmer Road, past the gasworks.”
“Yes, I’m walking,” said Kitty, shaking hands.
“And I will try to work hard this week,” she said, looking down on her with eyes full of love and admiration. Then she descended the steep stairs whose oilcloth shone bright with romance; and glanced at the umbrella that had a parrot for handle.
The son of the Professor, who had done it all off his own bat, “a most creditable performance”, to quote Dr. Malone, was mending the hen coops in the back garden at Prestwich Terrace — a scratched up little place. Hammer, hammer, hammer, he went, fixing a board to the rotten roof. His hands were white, unlike his father’s, and long fingered too. He had no love of doing these jobs himself. But his father mended the boots on Sunday. Down came the hammer. He went at it, hammering the long shiny nails that sometimes split the wood, or drove outside. For it was rotten. He hated hens too, imbecile fowls, a huddle of feathers, watching him out of their red beady eyes. They scratched up the path; left little curls of feather here and there on the beds, which were more to his fancy. But nothing grew there. How grow flowers like other people if one kept hens? A bell rang.
“Curse it! There’s some old woman come to tea,” he said, holding his hammer suspended; and then brought it down on the nail.
As she stood on the step, noting the cheap lace curtains and the blue and orange glass, Kitty tried to remember what it was that her father had said about Nelly’s father. But a little maid let her in. I’m much too large, Kitty thought, as she stood for a moment in the room to which the maid had admitted her. It was a small room, crowded with objects. And I’m too well dressed she thought, looking at herself in the glass over the fireplace. But here her friend Nelly came in. She was dumpy; over her large grey eyes she wore steel spectacles, and her brown holland overall seemed to increase her air of uncompromising veracity.
“We’re having tea in the back room,” she said, looking her up and down. What has she been doing? Why is she dressed in an overall? Kitty thought, following her into the room where tea had already begun.
“Pleased to see you,” said Mrs Robson formally, looking over her shoulder. But nobody seemed in the least pleased to see her. Two children were already eating. Slices of bread and butter were in their hands, but they stayed the bread and butter and stared at Kitty as she sat down.
She seemed to see the whole room at once. It was bare yet crowded. The table was too large; there were hard green-plush chairs; yet the table-cloth was coarse; darned in the middle; and the china was cheap with its florid red roses. The light was extraordinarily bright in her eyes. A sound of hammering came in from the garden outside. She looked at the garden; it was a scratched-up, earthy garden without flower-beds; and there was a shed at the end of the garden from which the sound of hammering came.
They’re all so short too, Kitty thought, glancing at Mrs Robson. Only her shoulders came above the tea things; but her shoulders were substantial. She was a little like Bigge, the cook at the Lodge, but more formidable. She gave one brief look at Mrs Robson and then began to pull off her gloves secretly, swiftly, under the cover of the table-cloth. But why does nobody talk? she thought nervously. The children kept their eyes fixed upon her with a look of solemn amazement. Their owl-like stare went up and down over her uncompromisingly. Happily before they could express their disapproval, Mrs Robson told them sharply to go on with their tea; and the bread and butter slowly rose to their mouths again.
Why don’t they say something? Kitty thought again, glancing at Nelly. She was about to speak when an umbrella grated in the hall; and Mrs Robson looked up and said to her daughter:
“There’s Dad!”
Next moment in trotted a little man, who was so short that he looked as if his jacket should have been an Eton jacket, and his collar a round collar. He wore, too, a very thick watch-chain, made of silver, like a schoolboy’s. But his eyes were keen and fierce, his moustache bristly, and he spoke with a curious accent.
“Pleased to see you,” he said, and gripped her hand hard in his. He sat down, tucked a napkin under his chin so that it obscured his heavy silver watch-chain under its stiff white shield. Hammer, hammer, hammer came from the shed in the garden.
“Tell Jo tea’s on the table,” said Mrs Robson to Nelly, who had brought in a dish with a cover on it. The cover was removed. Actually they were going to eat fried fish and potatoes at tea-time, Kitty remarked.
But Mr Robson had turned his rather alarming blue eyes upon her. She expected him to say, “How is your father, Miss Malone?”
But he said:
“You’re reading history with Lucy Craddock?”
“Yes,” she said. She liked the way he said Lucy Craddock, as if he respected her. So many of the Dons sneered at her. She liked feeling too, as he made her feel, that she was nobody’s daughter in particular.
“You’re interested in history?” he said, applying himself to his fish and potatoes.
“I love it,” she said. His bright blue eyes, gazing straight at her rather fiercely, seemed to make her say quite shortly what she meant.
“But I’m frightfully lazy,” she added. Here Mrs Robson looked at her rather sternly, and handed her a thick slice of bread on the point of a knife.
Anyhow their taste is awful, she said by way of revenge for the snub that she felt was intended. She focussed her eyes on a picture opposite — an oily landscape in a heavy gilt frame. There was a blue and red Japanese plate on either side of it. Everything was ugly, especially the pictures.
“The moor at the back of our house,” said Mr Robson, seeing her look at a picture.
It struck Kitty that the accent with which he spoke was a Yorkshire accent. In looking at the picture he had increased his accent.
“In Yorkshire?” she said. “We come from there too. My mother’s family I mean,” she added.
“Your mother’s family?” said Mr Robson.
�
��Rigby,” she said, and blushed slightly.
“Rigby?” said Mrs Robson, looking up.
“I wur-r-rked for a Miss Rigby before I married.”
What sort of wur-r-rk had Mrs Robson done? Kitty wondered. Sam explained.
“My wife was a cook, Miss Malone, before we married,” he said. Again he increased his accent as if he were proud of it. I had a great-uncle who rode in a circus, she felt inclined to say: and an Aunt who married . . . but here Mrs Robson interrupted her.
“The Hollies,” she said. “Two very old ladies; Miss Ann and Miss Matilda.” She spoke more gently.
“But they must be dead long ago,” she concluded. For the first time she leant back in her chair and stirred her tea, just as old Snap at the farm, Kitty thought, stirred her tea round and round and round.
“Tell Jo we’re not sparing the cake,” said Mr Robson, cutting himself a slice of that craggy-looking object; and Nell went out of the room once more. The hammering stopped in the garden. The door opened. Kitty, who had altered the focus of her eyes to suit the smallness of the Robson family, was taken by surprise. The young man seemed immense in that little room. He was a handsome young man. He brushed his hand through his hair as came in, for a wood shaving had stuck in it.
“Our Jo,” said Mrs Robson, introducing them. “Go and get the kittle, Jo,” she added; and he went at once as if he were used to it. When he came back with the kettle, Sam began chaffing him about a hencoop.
“It takes you a long time, my son, to mend a hencoop,” he said. There was some family joke which Kitty could not follow about mending boots and hencoops. She watched him eating steadily under his father’s banter. He was not Eton or Harrow, or Rugby or Winchester; or reading or rowing. He reminded her of Alf, the farm hand up at Carter’s, who had kissed her under the shadow of the haystack when she was fifteen, and old Carter loomed up leading a bull with a ring through its nose and said “Stop that!” She looked down again. She would rather like Jo to kiss her; better than Edward, she thought to herself suddenly. She remembered her own appearance, which she had forgotten. She liked him. Yes, she liked them all very much, she told herself; very much indeed. She felt as if she had given her nurse the slip and run off on her own.
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 209
