12
Then, for months, there was nothing in life save work: a careful planning out of day and night in order that sleeping and eating and exercise might encroach as little as possible on the working hours.
Soon, Midsummer term was back with unprecedented profusion of blossom on the fruit trees, buttercups in the meadows, nightingale choruses in the cedars and limes. But now it seemed neither exciting nor delightful to be kept awake till dawn by nightingales; for sleepless nights lowered your examination value. By day the two thrilling and unearthly pipe-notes of the cuckoo seemed a mechanical instrument of torture: you found yourself desperately counting the calls, waiting between each, with a shrinking of all the nerves, for the next to strike. Almost you resented the flowery orchards and meadows with their pagan-like riot of renewal. You noted them with a dull eye from behind the stiff ponderous academic entrenchment of your mind. But sometimes in the night, in dreams, the orchards would not be denied: they descended upon you and shook out fragrance like a blessing; they shone in pale drifts, in clouds, in seas,—all the orchards of England came before you, luminous and stirring beneath the moon.
From early morning till late at night the desperate meek untidy heads of girls were bowed over tables in the library, their faces when they lifted them were feverish and blurred with work.
Pages rustled; pencils whispered; squeaking shoes tiptoed in and out. Somebody tapped out a dreary tune on her teeth; somebody had a running cold; somebody giggled beneath her breath; somebody sighed and sighed.
Outside, in the sunshine, tennis racquets struck vibrantly. Long ago, you also had played tennis in May.
Mabel had a fortification of dictionaries around her corner; whenever you looked up she caught your eye and smiled weakly from a hollow and twisted face. Mabel had wished evil to Jennifer. But that was so long ago it had ceased to matter.
‘Mabel, you’ve worked four hours on end. Come to lunch now.’
‘No, thank you, Judith. I feel I don’t want any lunch. I’d rather go straight on and perhaps have a cup of tea later.’
‘Mabel, you’re to come with me.’
She came. But as often as not she laid down her fork after one mouthful and sat and stared in front of her; then crept back to the library.
The copper bowl was filled this term with golden tulips or with dark brown wallflowers.
Where was Jennifer?
Examination week. The sky was fiercely blue all day; the air breathless, heavy. To walk into the town was to walk into a steam bath, where footsteps moved ever more languidly, and the dogs lay panting on the pavement, and the clocks seemed to collect themselves with a vast effort for their chiming.
This week there was nothing in your mind save the machine which obeyed you smoothly, turning out dates and biographies, contrasting, discussing, theorizing.
Judith walked in a dream among the pale examination faces that flowed to their doom. Already at nine o’clock the heat struck up from the streets, rolled downwards from the roofs. By midday it would be extremely unpleasant in Cambridge.
This was the great examination hall. Girls were filing in, each carrying a glass of water, and searching in a sort of panic for her place. Here was a white ticket labelled Earle, J. So Judith Earle really was expected, an integral part of this grotesque organized unreality. No hope now.
The bench was hard. Beside her sat a kind broad cow-like creature with sandy hair and lashes. Her ruminative and prominent eyes shed pity and encouragement. She was a good omen.
All over the room girls’ heads turned, nodding and winking at friends, whispering, giggling and grimacing with desperate bravery. One simulated suicide by leaning her bosom on her fountain pen.
Just behind sat Mabel. Her face was glistening and ghastly, and she sniffed at a bottle of smelling salts.
‘Mabel, are you going to faint?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I generally feel faintlike first thing in the morning. I’ll get better later.’
‘Mabel, you’re not fit—you mustn’t——’
‘Sh! I’m all right. Only it makes my head feel stupid.’ She stared aghast. ‘I don’t seem to be able to remember a thing.’
‘Don’t worry, Mabel. It’ll all come back when you settle down to it. I’ll look around now and then and see if you’re all right.’
‘Poor Mabel! Good luck. Wait for me afterwards and I’ll take you to have a cup of coffee. That’ll do you good.’
‘I shall enjoy that. Good luck, Judith.’
She summoned a smile, even flushed faintly with pleasure.
Then panic descended suddenly upon Judith. Her head was like a floating bubble; there was nothing in it at all. She caught at threads of knowledge and they broke, withered and dissolved like cobwebs in the hand. She struggled to throw off a crowding confusion of half-remembered words.
Unarm Eros, the long day’s task is done. And we must sleep.... Peace! Peace! Dost thou not see my baby at my breast That sucks the nurse asleep?... Who said that? Who could have said such a thing? I am Duchess of Malfi still.... Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle. She died young. Beatrice died young too. Here Mother ... bind up this hair in any simple knot ... ay that does well.... Prithee undo this button.... Thank you, Sir.... Cordelia! Cordelia! So many of them died young. There were those two, you had forgotten their names now, and Cordelia, and Desdemona too. O, thou weed!... It might be useful to remember them.... But they had already slipped away. This was the parting that they had Beside the haystack in the floods. William Morris. Speak but one word to me over the corn. Over the tender bowed locks of the corn. Gold cornfield like Jennifer. A bracelet of bright hair about the bone. That had always been Jennifer’s bright hair. Only a woman’s hair.... Calm hair, meandering in pellucid gold. But Jennifer’s hair had never been calm.... Speak but one word to me. Roddy, one whisper from you!
It was Tennyson who said: The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls.... And Browning who said: The old June weather Blue above lane and wall. Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Shelley.... What had they said? and Blake:
Bring me my bow of burning gold; Bring me my arrows of desire.... Once you had composed a tune for that. Bring me my bow of burning gold.... Oh, stop saying that now. Think about the origins of drama, the rise of the universities, the development of the guilds, the order of Shakespeare’s plays.... O God! A headful of useless scraps rattling about in emptiness—
The clock struck nine.
‘You can begin now,’ said a thin voice from the däis.
There was an enormous sigh, a rustling of paper, then silence.
The questions had, nearly all, at first glance a familiar reassuring look. It was all right. Panic vanished, the mind assembled its energies, cooly, precisely, the pen flew.
After an hour the first pause to cool her forehead with a stick of frozen Eau de Cologne and to sip some water. Behind, poor Mabel’s dry little cough and sniff went on. The head bowed low over her writing looked as if it could never raise itself again.
Girls were wriggling and biting their pens. Somewhere the tooth-tapper was playing her dreary tune. The Cow looked up, shed a peaceful smile around her and continued to write, with deliberation, a little impeded by her bosom.
Another hour fled. The trouble was having too much to say, rather than too little. The room was rigid, dark with concentration now. There came an appalling confusion of haste and noise, and a girl rose and ran from the room, supported by the invigilator. The handkerchief she held to her nose was stained sickeningly with scarlet. She returned in a little while, pallid and tearful, resumed her seat, bowed herself once more over the paper.
Three hours. It was over. You could not remember what you had written; but you had never felt more firm and sure of mind. Three hours nearer to life.
Into the street once more, beneath the noon sun’s merciless down-beating. But now its rays seemed feeble: their warmth scarcely penetrated chilled hands and feet, or shivering, aching back.
A troop of undergraduates passed on the way from their examination room. They looked amused and exhilarated. They stuffed their papers into their pockets, lit pipes, straightened their shoulders and went cheerfully to lunch.
The girls crept out in twos and threes, earnestly talking, comparing the white slips they carried.
‘Did you do this one?’
‘What did you put for that?’
‘Oh, I say! Will they take off marks do you think?’
‘It was a beast.’
‘Oh, it might have been worse.’
Girls really should be trained to be less obviously female students. It only needed a little discipline.
There was Mabel to be looked after. She was grateful, passive: she drank much coffee but refused food. She broke the heavy silence once to say with a quiet smile: ‘Of course I see now I shan’t pass—It seems a pity, after all that work—My memory is practically gone——’
Back to the vault now for another three hours.
Suddenly round the corner came a slender, dark, sallow boy. He walked with an idle grace, leaning slightly forward. His faint likeness to Roddy made the heart leap; and his expression was dejected and obstinate, just as Roddy’s would be if he were forced to spend an afternoon scribbling infernal rubbish.
Judith paused at the entrance of the vault and looked back. His eyes were eagerly fixed on her: and she smiled at him.
He was delighted. His funny boy face lost its heaviness and broke up with intimate twinklings; and flashed a shyly daring inquiry at her before he vanished round the corner.
It was like a message from Roddy, sent forward to meet her from the new life, to say: ‘Remember I am coming.’
That day passed smoothly; and the next. The days sinking to evenings drenched with the smell of honeysuckle and draining to phantasmal and translucent twilights of blossom and tree-tops and starry skies, flowed imperceptibly to their end.
Suddenly there were no answers to be written from nine till twelve, from two till five—no lectures, no coachings, no notes, no fixed working hours. Instead, a great idleness under whose burden you felt lost and oppressed. The academic years were gone for ever.