Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf (books for 6 year olds to read themselves txt) 📕

The Countess of Rocksbier sat at the head of the table alone with Jacob.

Fed upon champagne and spices for at least two centuries (four, if you

count the female line), the Countess Lucy looked well fed. A

discriminating nose she had for scents, prolonged, as if in quest of

them; her underlip protruded a narrow red shelf; her eyes were small,

with sandy tufts for eyebrows, and her jowl was heavy. Behind her (the

window looked on Grosvenor Square) stood Moll Pratt on the pavement,

offering violets for sale; and Mrs. Hilda Thomas, lifting her skirts,

preparing to cross the road. One was from Walworth; the other from

Putney. Both wore black stockings, but Mrs. Thomas was coiled in furs.

The comparison was much in Lady Rocksbier’s favour. Moll had more

humour, but was violent; stupid too. Hilda Thomas was mealy-mouthed, all

her silver frames aslant; egg-cups in the drawing-room; and the windows

shrouded. Lady Rocksbier, whatever the deficiencies of her profile, had

been a great rider to hounds. She used her knife with authority, tore

her chicken bones, asking Jacob’s pardon, with her own hands.

“Who is that driving by?” she asked Boxall, the butler.

“Lady Firtlemere’s carriage, my lady,” which reminded her to send a card

to ask after his lordship’s health. A rude old lady, Jacob thought. The

wine was excellent. She called herself “an old woman”—“so kind to lunch

with an old woman”—which flattered him. She talked of Joseph

Chamberlain, whom she had known. She said that Jacob must come and meet—

one of our celebrities. And the Lady Alice came in with three dogs on a

leash, and Jackie, who ran to kiss his grandmother, while Boxall brought

in a telegram, and Jacob was given a good cigar.

A few moments before a horse jumps it slows, sidles, gathers itself

together, goes up like a monster wave, and pitches down on the further

side. Hedges and sky swoop in a semicircle. Then as if your own body ran

into the horse’s body and it was your own forelegs grown with his that

sprang, rushing through the air you go, the ground resilient, bodies a

mass of muscles, yet you have command too, upright stillness, eyes

accurately judging. Then the curves cease, changing to downright hammer

strokes, which jar; and you draw up with a jolt; sitting back a little,

sparkling, tingling, glazed with ice over pounding arteries, gasping:

“Ah! ho! Hah!” the steam going up from the horses as they jostle

together at the cross-roads, where the signpost is, and the woman in the

apron stands and stares at the doorway. The man raises himself from the

cabbages to stare too.

So Jacob galloped over the fields of Essex, flopped in the mud, lost the

hunt, and rode by himself eating sandwiches, looking over the hedges,

noticing the colours as if new scraped, cursing his luck.

He had tea at the Inn; and there they all were, slapping, stamping,

saying, “After you,” clipped, curt, jocose, red as the wattles of

turkeys, using free speech until Mrs. Horsefield and her friend Miss

Dudding appeared at the doorway with their skirts hitched up, and hair

looping down. Then Tom Dudding rapped at the window with his whip. A

motor car throbbed in the courtyard. Gentlemen, feeling for matches,

moved out, and Jacob went into the bar with Brandy Jones to smoke with

the rustics. There was old Jevons with one eye gone, and his clothes the

colour of mud, his bag over his back, and his brains laid feet down in

earth among the violet roots and the nettle roots; Mary Sanders with her

box of wood; and Tom sent for beer, the half-witted son of the sexton—

all this within thirty miles of London.

Mrs. Papworth, of Endell Street, Covent Garden, did for Mr. Bonamy in

New Square, Lincoln’s Inn, and as she washed up the dinner things in the

scullery she heard the young gentlemen talking in the room next door.

Mr. Sanders was there again; Flanders she meant; and where an

inquisitive old woman gets a name wrong, what chance is there that she

will faithfully report an argument? As she held the plates under water

and then dealt them on the pile beneath the hissing gas, she listened:

heard Sanders speaking in a loud rather overbearing tone of voice:

“good,” he said, and “absolute” and “justice” and “punishment,” and “the

will of the majority.” Then her gentleman piped up; she backed him for

argument against Sanders. Yet Sanders was a fine young fellow (here all

the scraps went swirling round the sink, scoured after by her purple,

almost nailless hands). “Women”—she thought, and wondered what Sanders

and her gentleman did in THAT line, one eyelid sinking perceptibly as

she mused, for she was the mother of nine—three still-born and one deaf

and dumb from birth. Putting the plates in the rack she heard once more

Sanders at it again (“He don’t give Bonamy a chance,” she thought).

“Objective something,” said Bonamy; and “common ground” and something

else—all very long words, she noted. “Book learning does it,” she

thought to herself, and, as she thrust her arms into her jacket, heard

something—might be the little table by the fire—fall; and then stamp,

stamp, stamp—as if they were having at each other—round the room,

making the plates dance.

“To-morrow’s breakfast, sir,” she said, opening the door; and there were

Sanders and Bonamy like two bulls of Bashan driving each other up and

down, making such a racket, and all them chairs in the way. They never

noticed her. She felt motherly towards them. “Your breakfast, sir,” she

said, as they came near. And Bonamy, all his hair touzled and his tie

flying, broke off, and pushed Sanders into the arm-chair, and said Mr.

Sanders had smashed the coffee-pot and he was teaching Mr. Sanders—

Sure enough, the coffee-pot lay broken on the hearthrug.

“Any day this week except Thursday,” wrote Miss Perry, and this was not

the first invitation by any means. Were all Miss Perry’s weeks blank

with the exception of Thursday, and was her only desire to see her old

friend’s son? Time is issued to spinster ladies of wealth in long white

ribbons. These they wind round and round, round and round, assisted by

five female servants, a butler, a fine Mexican parrot, regular meals,

Mudie’s library, and friends dropping in. A little hurt she was already

that Jacob had not called.

“Your mother,” she said, “is one of my oldest friends.”

Miss Rosseter, who was sitting by the fire, holding the Spectator

between her cheek and the blaze, refused to have a fire screen, but

finally accepted one. The weather was then discussed, for in deference

to Parkes, who was opening little tables, graver matters were postponed.

Miss Rosseter drew Jacob’s attention to the beauty