Jacob’s Room

haps. And then before one’s eyes would come the bare hills of Turkey – sharp lines, dry earth, coloured fl owers, and co­lour on the shoulders of the women, standing naked-legged in the stream to beat linen on the stones. The stream made loops of water round their ankles. But none of that could show clearly through the swaddlings and blanketings of the Cam­bridge night. The stroke of the clock even was muffl ed; as if intoned by somebody reverent from a pulpit; as if genera­tions of learned men heard the last hour go rolling through their ranks and issued it, already smooth and time-worn, with their blessing, for the use of the living.

alone with Masham? Anderson? Simeon? Oh, it was Simeon. The others had all gone.

Simeon said nothing. Jacob remained standing. But inti­macy – the room was full of it, still, deep, like a pool. Without need of movement or speech it rose softly and washed over everything, mollifying, kindling, and coating the mind with

52

the lustre of pearl, so that if you talk of a light, of Cambridge burning, it’s not languages only. It’s Julian the Apostate.

But Jacob moved. He murmured good-night. He went out into the court. He buttoned his jacket across his chest. He went back to his rooms, and being the only man who walked at that moment back to his rooms, his footsteps rang out, his fi gure loomed large. Back from the Chapel, back from the Hall, back from the Library, came the sound of his footsteps, as if the old stone echoed with magisterial authority: “The young man – the young man – the young man-back to his rooms.”

For the Scilly Isles had been sighted by Timmy Durrant lying like mountain-tops almost a-wash in precisely the right place. His calculations had worked perfectly, and really the sight of him sitting there, with his hand on the tiller, rosy gilled, with a sprout of beard, looking sternly at the stars, then at a com­pass, spelling out quite correctly his page of the eternal lesson­book, would have moved a woman. Jacob, of course, was not a woman. The sight of Timmy Durrant was no sight for him, nothing to set against the sky and worship; far from it. They had quarrelled. Why the right way to open a tin of beef, with Shakespeare on board, under conditions of such splendour, should have turned them to sulky schoolboys, none can tell. Tinned beef is cold eating, though; and salt water spoils bis­cuits; and the waves tumble and lollop much the same hour after hour – tumble and lollop all across the horizon. Now a spray of seaweed fl oats past-now a log of wood. Ships have

The Scilly Isles might well be obliterated by a roller sweep­ing straight across.

The Scilly Isles were turning bluish; and suddenly blue, purple, and green fl ushed the sea; left it grey; struck a stripe which vanished; but when Jacob had got his shirt over his head the whole fl oor of the waves was blue and white, rippling and crisp, though now and again a broad purple mark appeared, like a bruise; or there fl oated an entire emerald tinged with yellow. He plunged. He gulped in water, spat it out, struck with his right arm, struck with his left, was towed by a rope, gasped, splashed, and was hauled on board.

But imperceptibly the cottage smoke droops, has the look of a mourning emblem, a fl ag fl oating its caress over a grave. The gulls, making their broad fl ight and then riding at peace, seem to mark the grave.

observations.

“Now . . . ” said Jacob.

It is a tremendous argument.

Some people can follow every step of the way, and even take a little one, six inches long, by themselves at the end; oth­ers remain observant of the external signs.

long strained neck in eternal pursuit, skimmed an inch above the water to the next rock; and the drone of the tide in the caves came across the water, low, monotonous, like the voice of some one talking to himself.