Jacobs Room | Page 3

said Betty
Flanders. The sun blazed in their faces and gilded the great blackberries
trembling out from the hedge which Archer tried to strip as they
passed.
"Don't lag, boys. You've got nothing to change into," said Betty,
pulling them along, and looking with uneasy emotion at the earth
displayed so luridly, with sudden sparks of light from greenhouses in
gardens, with a sort of yellow and black mutability, against this blazing
sunset, this astonishing agitation and vitality of colour, which stirred
Betty Flanders and made her think of responsibility and danger. She
gripped Archer's hand. On she plodded up the hill.
"What did I ask you to remember?" she said.
"I don't know," said Archer.
"Well, I don't know either," said Betty, humorously and simply, and

who shall deny that this blankness of mind, when combined with
profusion, mother wit, old wives' tales, haphazard ways, moments of
astonishing daring, humour, and sentimentality--who shall deny that in
these respects every woman is nicer than any man?
Well, Betty Flanders, to begin with.
She had her hand upon the garden gate.
"The meat!" she exclaimed, striking the latch down.
She had forgotten the meat.
There was Rebecca at the window.
The bareness of Mrs. Pearce's front room was fully displayed at ten
o'clock at night when a powerful oil lamp stood on the middle of the
table. The harsh light fell on the garden; cut straight across the lawn; lit
up a child's bucket and a purple aster and reached the hedge. Mrs.
Flanders had left her sewing on the table. There were her large reels of
white cotton and her steel spectacles; her needle-case; her brown wool
wound round an old postcard. There were the bulrushes and the Strand
magazines; and the linoleum sandy from the boys' boots. A
daddy-long- legs shot from corner to corner and hit the lamp globe. The
wind blew straight dashes of rain across the window, which flashed
silver as they passed through the light. A single leaf tapped hurriedly,
persistently, upon the glass. There was a hurricane out at sea.
Archer could not sleep.
Mrs. Flanders stooped over him. "Think of the fairies," said Betty
Flanders. "Think of the lovely, lovely birds settling down on their nests.
Now shut your eyes and see the old mother bird with a worm in her
beak. Now turn and shut your eyes," she murmured, "and shut your
eyes."
The lodging-house seemed full of gurgling and rushing; the cistern
overflowing; water bubbling and squeaking and running along the

pipes and streaming down the windows.
"What's all that water rushing in?" murmured Archer.
"It's only the bath water running away," said Mrs. Flanders.
Something snapped out of doors.
"I say, won't that steamer sink?" said Archer, opening his eyes.
"Of course it won't," said Mrs. Flanders. "The Captain's in bed long ago.
Shut your eyes, and think of the fairies, fast asleep, under the flowers."
"I thought he'd never get off--such a hurricane," she whispered to
Rebecca, who was bending over a spirit-lamp in the small room next
door. The wind rushed outside, but the small flame of the spirit-lamp
burnt quietly, shaded from the cot by a book stood on edge.
"Did he take his bottle well?" Mrs. Flanders whispered, and Rebecca
nodded and went to the cot and turned down the quilt, and Mrs.
Flanders bent over and looked anxiously at the baby, asleep, but
frowning. The window shook, and Rebecca stole like a cat and wedged
it.
The two women murmured over the spirit-lamp, plotting the eternal
conspiracy of hush and clean bottles while the wind raged and gave a
sudden wrench at the cheap fastenings.
Both looked round at the cot. Their lips were pursed. Mrs. Flanders
crossed over to the cot.
"Asleep?" whispered Rebecca, looking at the cot.
Mrs. Flanders nodded.
"Good-night, Rebecca," Mrs. Flanders murmured, and Rebecca called
her ma'm, though they were conspirators plotting the eternal conspiracy
of hush and clean bottles.

Mrs. Flanders had left the lamp burning in the front room. There were
her spectacles, her sewing; and a letter with the Scarborough postmark.
She had not drawn the curtains either.
The light blazed out across the patch of grass; fell on the child's green
bucket with the gold line round it, and upon the aster which trembled
violently beside it. For the wind was tearing across the coast, hurling
itself at the hills, and leaping, in sudden gusts, on top of its own back.
How it spread over the town in the hollow! How the lights seemed to
wink and quiver in its fury, lights in the harbour, lights in bedroom
windows high up! And rolling dark waves before it, it raced over the
Atlantic, jerking the stars above the ships this way and that.
There was a click in the front