Bildungsromans; Psychological fiction; Young women -- Fiction
‘I shall call you Jennifer. It’s delicious,--different from anyone else.
It’s like you.’
From the pillow Jennifer’s face broke into shy smiles, like a gratified
child’s.
Judith busied herself quietly in the sitting-room, tidying the cups and
knives,--enjoying the novel sensation of rendering service. After a few
moments she called:
‘You wouldn’t suppose from their conversation that these girls are
intellectual--would you?’
There was no reply. After a few more minutes she peeped into the
bedroom. Jennifer’s peaceful flushed countenance and regular breathing
greeted her astonished senses.
She was sleeping the sleep of the slightly intoxicated just.
2
The Indian summer stretched out through October that year. The closing
harmonies were so complete that the gardens of the earth seemed but to
repeat and enrich the gardens of the sky; and a day like a sunflower
broadened to a sunset full of dahlias and late roses; with clouds above
them massed, burnished and edged with bloom like the foliage of the
trees of earth. Slowly at night the chill mists, bitter-sweet in smell,
luminous beneath the moon, crept over and blotted all out.
The weeks drifted on. College became a pleasant habit. Lecturers ceased
to be oracles. Work ceased to be important. Young men stared in lecture
rooms and streets. There grew the consciousness of fundamental masculine
apartness: of the other sex mysteriously calling to and avoiding it
across an impassable gulf. Bookshops became places in which to wander
and browse whole mornings. Towards the town, back from the town, the
long road stretched out daily between the flat ploughed fields: the
immense and crushing arc of the sky was swept forever with rich changes.
And the buildings,--the fall of sunlight and shadow on grey stone, red
stone, the unblurred design of roofs and walls at dusk,--the buildings
lifted their bulk, unfolded their pattern, glowed upon the mind by day
and by night, breaking in upon essays, disturbing time-papers.
Jennifer’s shining head, curved cheek, lifted white throat lay against
the blue curtain, just beyond the lamplight. Very late she sat there and
said nothing, did nothing; made you lift eyes from the page, watch her,
dream, wait for her smile to answer yours.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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