13
The evening before the end of term.
Judith walked with the rest of the circle arm in arm across the grass, down the wooded path, past the honeysuckle for the last time.
The garden spread out all her beauties that were hers alone, overburdening the watchers, insisting:
‘See what you are leaving. Look at what you will never have again.’
The whole shrine lay wide open for the last time, baring its mysteries of cedar and limes and nightingales, of lawns and mown hay, of blossoming shrubs and wild flowers growing beneath them, of copper beeches and all the high enclosing tree-tops, serenely swimming like clouds in the last of the light.
They chose careers for each other, light-heartedly discussing the future, and making plans for regular reunions.
‘But what’s the good?’ said one. ‘We shall all be scattered really. We can’t come back year after year as if things would all be the same. There’s nothing more awful than those gatherings of elderly people trying to be girls together again. The ghastliness of pretending to get back to where one was! If we meet again, let it be in the big world. I shall never come back here.’
‘Oh, but I shan’t have the strength to resist it,’ said another. ‘You see I more or less know I shall never be so happy again. I’ve got to teach brats algebra. I shall be pulled back to indulge in vain regrets.’
‘Does it mean so much to you?’ murmured Judith. ‘You talk as if your life was over.’
‘Something that matters—terribly to me is over,’ she said, almost fiercely.
‘Oh!’ Judith sighed.
‘Doesn’t it mean anything to you then?’
Judith was silent, thinking how it had all meant the single tremendous calamitous significance of Jennifer; how since her going it had been like the muddy bed of a lake whose waters have been sapped day after day in a long drought; like a tasteless meal to be swallowed without appetite; like a grey drizzling unwholesome weather. Nothing had brought even a momentary illusion of restored contentment: nothing save her copper bowl glowing for her sake with flowers or fruit. Not one of those to whom she had turned had been able to sooth the gnawing perpetual sore, or bury for a single day that one face. And they knew it. The three years’ absorption in Jennifer had separated her irrevocably from them, and, though they had kindly welcomed her, it had been with the tacit assumption that she was not of them.
They were so charming, so gentle, so sensitive and intelligent: fascinating creatures: how fascinating she had never troubled to realize and would never know now. To all, save Jennifer, that had offered itself, she had turned an unheeding ear, a blind eye. And so much that might have been of enduring value had offered itself: so many possible interests and opportunities had been neglected.
There had been that girl the first year who, from the pinnacle of her third-year eminence, had stooped, blushing and timid, with her invitation to an evening alone. Frail temples, narrow exquisite bone of cheek and jaw, clear little face with lips whose composure seemed the result of a vast nervous effort, so still were they, so nearly quivering, so vulnerable; eyes with a sad liquid brilliance in their steadfast gaze; small head with smooth brown hair parted in the middle; narrow hands folded in her lap; she had sat, the most important scholar in the College, like a shadow, a moth, a bird, listening, questioning, listening again.
She was a poet. She never showed her verses, but to you she promised to show them. She had a mind of such immaculate clarity that you feared to touch it: yet she was offering it to you, all that evening.
It had come to nothing after all. She had retired very soon, shrinking from Jennifer as if she were afraid.
There had been the girl with the torturing love affair that had gone wrong. One night she had suddenly spoken of it, telling you all. You had lingered by her with a little tenderness and pity and then passed on. She had said, “You won’t tell Jennifer, will you?”
There had been the girl who drew portraits and who had wanted you for a model. There had been the silent girl who read “The Book of the Dead” night after night in her room, who was studying, so it was whispered, to raise the devil and who looked at you with a secret smile, half malice, half something else; there had been that most beautiful young girl in the first year, with her cold angelic face and shining silver-fair hair; all those and countless others had offered themselves. There had been Martin ignored and neglected because he disliked Jennifer. And there had been books, far more books in far more libraries: and new poetry, new music, new plays,—a hundred intellectual diversions which you had but brushed against or missed altogether by secluding yourself within the limits of an unprofitable dream.
She said at last:
‘Oh yes. It means something. I don’t know yet how much. I’m afraid now I’ve missed a lot.’
They were all silent, and she thought with nervous dread that they were all thinking of Jennifer.
‘Isn’t it extraordinary,’ said another, ‘how time seems to have stood still in this place? Nothing’s moved since we’ve been here. Even though I suppose it’s all been advancing towards the Tripos, I don’t feel as if there’d been any step forward. Everything—what’s the word?—static. Or else just making circles. I feel I’ve been sitting in a quiet safe pool for three years.’
‘And now we’re going to be emptied out.’
And swept into new life, thought Judith longingly. Yet her heart misgave her. The building, caressed with sunset, looked motherly and benign, spreading its sheltering breast for the last time above its midgets. New life might find nothing so secure and tranquil as its dispassionate protection.
The clock struck the hour pensively.
‘Well, I think it’s beastly,’ said one. ‘I’m going in to finish packing.’
Where, on this calm lime-scented last evening, was Jennifer?